


just like you

by transit (dollyeo)



Series: Actor/Manager AU [3]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Genderbending, Kid Fic, Minor Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8, Minor Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Wen Jun Hui | Jun, Return of Superman AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-06
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-01-29 10:30:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 26,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12629040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollyeo/pseuds/transit
Summary: "Oh come on," says Soonyoung, with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Don't you think it'd be fun?""I'm glad one of us finds this hilarious," says Wonwoo, "because I really, really don't.""It'll be great," says Soonyoung. "You'll steal all the housewives' hearts. Return of Superman is basically an excuse to parade around all the DILFs in all their glory.""Mommy, what's a DILF?" A voice echoes in the background – most likely Bongki, because he's the only one who even bothers to ask, unlike Bongsun who's already parroting it at the top of his lungs.(Wonwoo doesn't know how he's gotten to this point, signing onto Return of Superman after basically being guilt-tripped into it, but alas. Clearly he's at the bottom of the pecking order in this household.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historiologies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historiologies/gifts), [thelaziesthufflepuff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelaziesthufflepuff/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY (MONTH), CAT AND HONGWEN!!!!!!!!!! have some babies ever after and trouble in domesticity, hehehe \o/ I hope you enjoy!!!

"You've got to be kidding me."

There's the tiniest of pauses from the other end of the line – it's not delayed from shitty reception, nor an issue of static crackling over the call, no. Wonwoo's in the heart of Tokyo right about now, so he can't exactly use the excuse of having piss-poor signal for it, and as far as he knows, Soonyoung's back in their apartment in Seoul, where Wonwoo's paying extra for really damn good service from KT to make calls like this a little less unbearable than they already are.

That pause isn't really doing wonders to help lift Wonwoo's mood up, no.

"Oh come on," says Soonyoung, with a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Don't you think it'd be fun?"

"I'm glad one of us finds this hilarious," says Wonwoo, "because I really, really don't."

"It'll be great," says Soonyoung. "You'll steal all the housewives' hearts. Return of Superman is basically an excuse to parade around all the DILFs in all their glory."

"Mommy, what's a DILF?" A voice echoes in the background – most likely Bongki, because he's the only one who even bothers to ask, unlike Bongsun who's already parroting it at the top of his lungs.

Soonyoung mutters a curse under her breath, and Wonwoo sees her go out of the frame to beg Bongki and Bongsun to please, _please_ never repeat that word in front of anyone else, especially grandma and grandpa. Wonwoo closes his eyes and hopes to god Bongsun gets distracted by something else later on, but it's Bongki they'll probably have to watch out for over the holidays, in case he decides to ask again. He's heard Jihoon splutter and turn into stone-faced silence when Bongki asked them about the birds and the bees, especially after Junjie had been born. Now he knows what his parents must have felt, when he was a lot younger. Curiosity is a dangerous thing.

When Soonyoung comes back into the frame, she's carrying Bongsun in her arms. Bongki's still nowhere to be found, probably off sulking in a corner of the room with his toys. "Say hi to daddy, Sun-ah."

"Hi daddy," says Bongsun, but it's garbled from the thumb he's sucking at. They'll have to wean Bongsun off of that habit, soon, but unfortunately chili pepper has little to no effect on him. At least he's stopped gnawing on his baby blanket and carting it around, though Wonwoo had to play bad cop at one point and pretend he'd thrown the damn thing into a fire just to get the temper tantrum over and done with. It's Wonwoo that keeps playing the villain over and over again.

"Hey baby," says Wonwoo. From the other screen, he can see the frown on his face melt, as if it's never been there, though he knows he and Soonyoung will have to have Words about his schedule soon. "How was your day?"

"Mom took us to the zoo," says Bongsun. He puffs out his cheeks, displeased. "All the animals were having naptime."

"Did you get ice cream on your way back?"

"Noooo," Bongsun whines. "Mom wouldn't let us get any."

"Who thought it would be a good idea to shake the cages and tap at every glass again?" Soonyoung asks, dryly.

"Bongki did it," Bongsun mutters. He's at that stage where he's realized one of the fringe benefits of having an identical twin, and so far he's been using it for more evil rather than good. Wonwoo's torn between feeling proud and ashamed he's raising conmen in his own home.

It doesn't convince Soonyoung, though – "They almost ripped out my vagina and uterus, what makes you think I won't be able to tell them apart," is usually Soonyoung's only explanation for it, even if Wonwoo's _sure_ Soonyoung's only really making it up as she goes along. Soonyoung raises an eyebrow at Bongsun, and Bongsun just squirms out of her grasp, impatiently. "I gotta go potty!"

"Get caught doing something wrong and suddenly he remembers how to use the toilet," says Soonyoung, shaking her head. She waits until Bongsun starts pestering Bongki into sharing his blocks with him before she turns back to Wonwoo. "Anyway, after your last drama, I figured you'd need to get back into the general public's good graces again. God knows everyone and their mother already hates you."

"I can't help it if I'm an excellent actor," says Wonwoo, loftily. "You couldn't have signed me up for a different variety show?"

"Well, maybe if you were an idol instead, then we could have penciled you in for Weekly Idol," says Soonyoung, rolling her eyes.

"It's not too late for that," Wonwoo considers. If Shinhwa and Sechskies can do it, why can't he?

"Dream on, Jeon Wonwoo," says Soonyoung. She draws her knees up to her chest, letting her chin rest on her kneecaps. "What's so bad about the show anyway?"

Everything. "Nothing." To say he's dreading the possibility of appearing in Return of Superman is a stretch, but not too far from the truth. Especially considering— "You know Chuseok's coming up soon, right? You're really leaving me alone and abandoning me to the wolves by then?"

"Did you just call our children animals?"

"You've seen them fight over who gets to solve the puzzles at the back of the cereal box. Look me in the eye and tell me you don't think the holidays are gonna make it worse."

"Well," says Soonyoung, delicately, "if it means you can spend time with them on Chuseok, then why not?"

And that's when Wonwoo realizes he's fighting a losing battle, then and there.

It's nothing new. Soonyoung doesn't really make as much of a fuss about it, but he knows that she's more than a little upset every time work overlaps with the holidays; it's part of the industry, but when they were younger, it had been nothing to just fly in and out for a few short hours, a tryst they could keep hidden in the guise of work. Older, now, and with two kids, one deathly afraid of flying, the other a chatterbox that could have been the reason they invented soundproof walls, and suddenly that time seems so distant, foreign. 

It doesn't help that ever since production of Wonwoo's latest drama started, the twins have been increasingly cagey around him, refusing to snuggle up to Wonwoo like they used to without Soonyoung in the room. He'd signed up as a villain opposite Mingyu and Junhui in an effort to expand his repertoire and branch out from his hopeless suitor roles, and while it's gotten him nothing but praise from the critics, he can't say the same for the netizens and, unfortunately, his own children. With every new episode, Bongki keeps looking at him like he's expecting him to draw a gun out of his pocket. It's _that_ bad.

"Seeing you like that on TV is scaring them, you know," Soonyoung says with a hushed voice later on, when they start talking about it. "I mean, you _did_ shoot Mingyu."

Privately, Wonwoo thinks that Mingyu deserved it, especially after Soonyoung swooned and sighed over Mingyu's promo shoots. But that's just petty and childish and something he'll never say aloud, even if it's true.

"Why do you even let them watch these things?" He wonders. "You know they're not age appropriate—"

"How else are they gonna see you when you're out of town filming and call at odd hours?" Soonyoung asks, quietly.

Wonwoo opens his mouth. He closes it again. Soonyoung's grin is grainy through his phone screen, if a little sad, and it makes something in Wonwoo ache, longing.

"I thought so," says Soonyoung. She sighs and touches the edge of her screen, stroking at where her thumb might line up with Wonwoo's cheek on her tablet. "We miss you a lot, Wonwoo-yah. Come home soon."

 _I miss you too, everyday_ , Wonwoo thinks. Soonyoung's face, through the tiny screen – it's not enough, and he's always been selfish.

It's probably this, and a fit of insanity, that makes him say yes.

 

 

It's not that Wonwoo hates spending time with his kids. He's not a bad dad, he thinks, no matter what Xu fucking Minghao says. There's not a lot he wouldn't do for his kids, even if they drive him crazy more often than not. He kisses them goodnight when he comes home late or straight from the airport while they're sleeping, and makes sure Bongki's blankets cover him up like a burrito because he always complains about being cold and the monsters eating him if he leaves any part of his body out of the safety of the covers despite Bongsun constantly throwing off all the blankets (and sometimes his own pajamas) on the other side of the bed. He gets them all sorts of souvenirs and toys when he's coming from an overseas trip, and there's nothing he loves more than to see their faces light up at the sight of sweets and snacks, even if Soonyoung keeps complaining it's another trip to the dentist when they eat too much. For their last birthday, he'd dressed up as a Dino Force Brave character after borrowing a costume from a friend. He _hates_ sentai shows and cosplay.

(Soonyoung had loved it, though, and had shown him exactly what she felt about him in a superhero outfit later that night, with her thighs bracketing his waist and clinging to his shoulders like a lifeline as he fucked her up against the wall. He's only marginally reconsidering his stance on sentai, now. Just a little.

He really needs to hit the gym again, though. All that upper body strength he's had when he was younger's practically halved by now. Wall sex isn't nearly as exciting if he's losing his breath from more exertion than fun.)

Still, they're both very different from how they used to be. When they were three, they used to latch onto Wonwoo without a fuss, even getting cranky if they weren't being held or cuddled. Now they only really hug Wonwoo for, like, three seconds every time he comes home after filming out of the country before they start ransacking his luggage for chocolates and toys, leaving Wonwoo alone with the cat and the dog in the entrance to the apartment.

"I missed you too, guys," says Wonwoo, keeping his arms outstretched. Pompom, the dog, bounds up to lick at his jaw, and Hoshi, the cat, just flicks his tail at Wonwoo's knees before slithering back to his spot above the warm TV set, peering at his denizens from atop.

The sarcasm's completely lost to them, even to Soonyoung, who just pokes her head out of the living room long enough to make a beeline for his bag in search of her spoils of war.

"Oooh, a new album," Soonyoung coos, holding it close to her chest. Not for the first time, Wonwoo decides he hates idols so much. "Did you get me the limited edition DVD too?"

"Hello to you too," says Wonwoo, dryly. He slips off his shoes, setting them down neatly by the foyer. "I got Mingyu to go out and buy them for me. He said they were fresh out."

"All those connections, wasted," Soonyoung sighs, with a teasing quirk at the corner of her mouth giving her away. "What use do I even have for you, Wonwoo-yah?"

"Who else would make someone else line up for AKB48 merchandise for you?"

"Tone down the judgment, big guy," says Soonyoung. "I don't comment on all the Love Live merch and other pervy stuff you've been secretly hoarding."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," says Wonwoo.

"So you didn't buy anything for me to cosplay when you were in Akihabara?" Soonyoung asks, with fake innocence. She bats her eyelashes up at him, toying at his shirt sleeve. "Like a maid outfit, perhaps?"

"You are an evil, evil person," says Wonwoo, sounding pained. He kicks his duffel bag behind him and prays she doesn't snoop into his luggage just yet.

"It's fine," says Soonyoung, leaning closer to press a kiss to the side of Wonwoo's neck, the heat of it making him shiver, promising. "I know how to make it worth your while, master."

"Cocktease," Wonwoo chokes out.

Soonyoung just grins and blows a kiss at him on her way to their room with her ill-gotten gains, but not without stealing his duffel bag with a victorious cackle. Personal space and shame, clearly no one in this household has them.

He sighs and resigns himself to unpacking his bags to the crooning J-pop idols in the background for the rest of the night. And if Soonyoung ends up clambering over his lap, frills and all, he lets himself get distracted. The thigh highs _are_ very nice, after all.

 

 

It's not all smooth sailing. Lately, the twins reached a point where they're growing up faster than Wonwoo expects, to the point that they're starting to form their own Decisions and Opinions, and not necessarily good ones. They're usually completely illogical and nonsensical, like pouring all of Soonyoung's liquid foundation in the bath tub, or using Wonwoo's freshly delivered script as scratch paper for their latest art project. Just this morning, they'd been trying to convince Wonwoo and Soonyoung they needed to beef up their security system with legit laser beams in their rooms, ostensibly to fight the monsters that come out late at night, when the monsters think everyone else is sleeping.

"We can hear them, though!" Bongsun protests, putting up a brave front in the kitchen table despite the way he's shaking like a leaf. "Something hard kept hitting the wall last night, and there were weird sounds like someone was being attacked!"

Wonwoo and Soonyoung exchange a look. _It's probably the cat_ , Wonwoo mouths.

 _It could be the dog_ , Soonyoung mouths back. Impossible, Wonwoo thinks. The cat is the true spawn of Satan in this household.

"Our house is haunted," Bongsun wails. "We need to move out!"

Bongki nods his head, and squeezes the banana milk carton in his hands so hard it keeps spilling out and sloshing all over the front of his shirt. Without missing a beat, Wonwoo plucks a wet tissue from the countertop and wipes Bongki's chin and neck, taking the carton away from his sticky fingers.

"Really now?" Wonwoo muses, just to humor them. "What makes you say that?"

"It was coming from your room," says Bongki, tearing up. "What if it goes after you next?"

"I don't wanna live with Uncle Bohyuk," Bongsun wails.

Clearly, their children have their priorities in order, but that's not what makes Wonwoo choke on his coffee and Soonyoung contemplate using the spatula in her hand to hit something. Hard. Wonwoo doesn't remember any monsters or ghosts, but he does remember kissing Soonyoung all night and making love to her so hard the headboard kept creaking, even after Soonyoung had wondered if maybe they were waking the kids up with the noise.

("It's fine," Wonwoo groaned, swallowing her whimper with a deep kiss as he thrust harder. He cradled the back of her head with his palm to keep her from hitting the headboard, but she was wriggling around so much he was almost tempted to scour around for the handcuffs Junhui got them as a gag gift, once. Maybe later. "Bongsun sleeps like the dead. Even an earthquake won't wake him up.")

Soonyoung, through gritted teeth, shoots a dark look at Wonwoo, and turns to the twins with a mild hint of panic in her eyes. "Sweetie, you're imagining things," she tries, voice wavering only slightly. "Did you watch Nightmare Before Christmas again last night?" 

"Noooooo," Bongsun and Bongki chorus, but from the warbling of their voices, Wonwoo resolves to punch Mingyu for even introducing the film to them in the first place.

The two don't even bat an eyelash or give away a facial twitch, to their credit. Great. They're raising liars and conmen in this house. Maybe they'd actually make it big in the acting business, even if Soonyoung is vehemently against it.

Wonwoo's hoping they'd hate Return of Superman enough to swear off any film-making in the future, though. He can only hope.

 

 

He talks to his father about it. Of course he does. He's far from being a shining example of a filial son, but the older he gets, the more he tries to rationalize his life choices with people that _aren't_ Soonyoung, a hastily google-searched magic 8-ball, or the beady, unblinking eyes of the cat as he contemplates pleading temporary insanity to get away with taking an impromptu, year-long break.

"I think it's a great idea," says his father over the phone, when Wonwoo's hiding out in the bathroom with Hoshi curled up at his feet, right above the fluffy bath mat.

Wonwoo shifts in his seat, wincing as his bare calf hits the porcelain surface of the toilet, cool to the touch. "Is this really your opinion, or is it mom's?"

"Tell him to get that Mingyu boy to show up as a guest," he hears his mother call out. "I'll get Bohyuk to download the episodes for me if he does."

Wonwoo groans. How many years later, and Mingyu still has the housewife demographic eating out of the palm of his hand. His father laughs, a low chuckle that Soonyoung's always told Wonwoo he's gotten from his father. "I always defer to her better judgment," he says. "Besides, it's cheaper than having to print out so many pictures for the photo album. God only knows how many scrapbooks your mother's made since they were born."

The wiser choice, clearly, if not ultimately self-serving. Wonwoo shakes his head with a sigh.

"I dunno," says Wonwoo. He scratches at his arm, watching the skin turn pink. "Don't you think the kids are a little too young for this?"

"It isn't too early to start building up that college fund," says his father. Wonwoo rolls his eyes.

"Bongsun wants to be a pirate when he grows up," says Wonwoo. "I'm more worried about them turning to a life of crime instead of academia."

"You wanted to be a lion when you were four," his father reminds him.

"Clearly, every Jeon son is an idiot," says Wonwoo. "Just look at Bohyuk. He's never outgrown being dumb."

"What does that make you, then?"

"An even bigger idiot, considering I'm even contemplating going through with this."

"I'm sure it'll be fine. They've got you to watch over them, after all."

"You're supposed to warn me against the idea, not give me false hope about my parenting abilities."

"Have more confidence in yourself," says his father, sounding amused even in the midst of Wonwoo's despair. "They've made it this far alive, haven't they?"

He guesses it's true. Between him and Soonyoung, it's him that's the helicopter parent, discounting all the times he's away for work. When Soonyoung was pregnant, Wonwoo had been the one to obsessively scour every inch of the apartment just to baby proof the furniture and the wall sockets, all while Soonyoung watched from her spot on the couch, eating an entire bag of the overly salty pretzels she used to hate before the crazy food cravings started. _He'd_ been the one scoping out the most ergonomic and comfortable strollers in the market, regardless of expense, while Soonyoung sorted through their choices based on color and design. All those parenting manuals they'd gotten from the baby shower? Wonwoo's the one who read them all from front to back, _twice_. He doubts Soonyoung even made it past the intro before she'd gotten bored.

He's not a bad parent. Really, he's not.

"Not if they kill each other first, the way they fight all the time," says Wonwoo, dryly.

"They're very well-behaved kids, though."

"Only because you give them pocket money," says Wonwoo. "You should see them when they're in their natural state of being. It's the worst."

"If they're anything like you and your brother, I'm not too worried," says his father. There's a pause on the other end of the line, but Wonwoo hears him make a humming sound under his breath, like he's thinking about something. "You should come over one of these days. It'll be great to see you and the kids again."

Wonwoo's quiet, for a beat; he thinks about how long it's been since he's seen his parents—almost a year? Or was it more than? He thinks of time in terms of projects, back-to-back filming for hours on end, and it's always in some far-off location, away from home. He knows Soonyoung sometimes visits with the kids in tow, buttoning them up in their warmest coats and taking an early KTX train to Changwon to make it in time for lunch; sometimes his father will take them up to Jinhae Dream Park so Bongki can take pictures of the multi-colored cacti with Soonyoung's cellphone, and sometimes they'll walk along Yeojwacheon Stream with Wonwoo's mother, Bongsun sticking his limbs through the holes of the wooden fence and asking if the water's shallow enough for him to swim.

It's one of the rare times Bongki gets chatty enough to tell him all about his day, when he calls them on his break; there's not a lot of things that make Bongki easy to coax anything out of, and it makes Wonwoo bite his lip, considering.

"Yeah," says Wonwoo, tightening his grip around his phone. "It'll be great to see you too."

 

 

Wonwoo steps out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, and finds Soonyoung curled up on the couch, reading a magazine. He makes a beeline to the empty spot beside her, squeezing into the space to rest his head on her lap.

"I swear, it's like I'm raising nothing but dogs and cats in this household sometimes," says Soonyoung. She looks down at him, and her expression turns soft, chastised. "You've been talking to your dad again, haven't you?"

"Yeah," says Wonwoo, closing his red-rimmed eyes. His voice is rough — the tail end of it splinters and cracks. "I was."

He likes talking to his parents, but it always leaves him feeling like it's never enough. He feels Soonyoung's fingers card through his hair, nails tickling his scalp, and the feel of it keeps him weighed down, sensitized.

"Maybe we should take a weekend trip to see them soon," says Soonyoung, keeping her tone light, like she knows that something in Wonwoo's chest feels tight, like it's aching. Too much, too much. Not enough. "We can get Bohyuk to look after the pets while we're out."

"Sounds like a plan," says Wonwoo, tucking his cheek against her thigh. He falls asleep like that, breathing her in until he can feel himself breathe easy.

She's always known exactly the right words to say, every time.

 

 

They start officially sitting down with the producers and writers once Wonwoo's schedule starts letting up, and Wonwoo's holding onto the faintest sense of hope that Bongsun or Bongki's more antisocial tendencies crop up the entire time with the motherlode of all temper tantrums erupting mid-interview. Surprisingly, though, they're more quiet and complacent than Wonwoo or Soonyoung expect, Bongsun falling asleep at the drop of a hat in Wonwoo's arms and Bongki clinging to Soonyoung's side like he's expecting a nasty surprise to pop out any time soon, eyeing everything and everyone in the office with mistrust.

Wonwoo's never identified with Bongki as much as he does now.

They lay down a few ground rules: nothing too intrusive, no cameras in Wonwoo and Soonyoung's bedroom, oh god, please, no, and a few more hours of downtime than usual, at least until the twins start cozying up to the idea. More importantly, though, Wonwoo only requests one thing:

"Don't invite Kim Mingyu," he says. " _Please_."

"But it would be excellent promo for your drama," says PD Kang. "He appeared as a guest in one of Jihoon-sshi's episodes, too, and the ratings went off the roof."

"This is a very confusing time for my kids," says Wonwoo. "I don't think bringing in other people will help."

"What are you talking about?" Soonyoung squawks, when she hears about it later. "The kids _love_ Mingyu!"

"That's what I'm afraid of," Wonwoo mutters.

"Well, _I_ want Mingyu in it," says Soonyoung, already opening her phone and texting, presumably, either Mingyu or his manager. Or, possibly, Minghao. That one's more plausible. "Can you imagine Mingyu giving the kids a bubble bath? It's all my dreams coming to life!"

"Sometimes I wonder if you say these things to rile me up," says Wonwoo, long-sufferingly, "but then I remember you'd be part of his fan club if we weren't married."

"Who says I'm not?" Soonyoung cackles, lips curling up into a mischievous grin.

Wonwoo ends up chasing her around the living room, and Bongki and Bongsun poke their heads out of their room to join the fray with a wild roar, tackling Wonwoo.

"We've defeated the kiss monster," Bongsun cheers, from atop his perch on Wonwoo's stomach, where Wonwoo's pretending to be dead. "Do we get a kiss now, mom?"

"My brave princes," coos Soonyoung. She gives them each a kiss on the cheek that they greedily preen under, and Wonwoo has a brief moment to wonder when they'll grow up and get tired of being doted on. If they'll ever outgrow it.

He doesn't get to dwell on that thought for long, because Soonyoung presses a kiss to his mouth, little more than a chaste peck, but it's enough to have his eyelids flutter open.

"Welcome back, sleeping beauty," she says, smirking down at him.

"What's the point of reviving the monster after all their hard work?" Wonwoo asks, dryly, as he puts his arm around her waist to drag her down to him. She follows after him with a squeak, but soon snuggles up against him, barely batting an eyelash at the surface of the floor, cool and hard to the touch.

She noses up at his jaw, past his cheek, to whisper into his ear. "They got one thing wrong," she says, eyes crinkling. "I'm the kiss monster, not you."

Wonwoo shivers, and tries not to feel too disappointed when Bongsun and Bongki start complaining they're hungry and tug at Soonyoung's arms like a pair of whining puppies. That's one of the things he's had to get used to, ever since the twins were born: sharing Soonyoung's time, her attention, and letting the want taper off into something softer, something more innocent.

Later on, as he dims the lights and traces a path of kisses from Soonyoung's nape down to the base of her spine, he thinks he'll miss this part most, when the film crew starts taking up space and peeking into their lives through camera lenses hidden behind flimsy makeshift playhouses and tents. He'll miss the easy way Soonyoung melts into his arms, tangling their fingers together as he makes her tremble and shake, or the way she looks at him like he's something that could easily come undone at the slightest touch, even as he wants nothing more than to wreck her.

He sinks into Soonyoung easily, settling into the crux of her parted legs, wet and drawing him in. She makes a low, guttural sound at the back of her throat, tries to spread her thighs apart even more and meet him halfway with the arch of her back, and that fire in his belly plucks at his skin at the sight. He doesn't want for a lot of things, but right now, he wants to stay inside her forever, wants to rut and roll his hips against her like he has all the time in the world.

"Love you," She mouths into his skin, almost inaudible in the stutter of her gasp, the hitch of her breathing as he fucks into her, lazy and slow. The tightness pooling in his stomach crests and wanes, shaking with every dig of her ankles into the small of his back, keeping him locked in, trapped. "So, so much, I—"

He cups her cheek with a hand to frame her face, kisses her so hard as he gropes around for her clit, just so he can feel her tighten up around him as he rubs the soft hood in frantic circles. He loves it, loves this, the heady, drunken cloak of her scent, the way she clenches and pants his name into his mouth, again, again. He loves the way her nails scrabble at his back and settle at the back of his head, tugging at his hair with a desperation that he knows means she's about to come. This close, and he just wants to devour everything of her, consume her whole, as full and sated as the tenderness in his chest, fond.

He'll never get tired of this.

 

 

The thing Wonwoo misses most about newlywed life is having the luxury of time to wake up the next morning and going back to sleeping in without debating the pros and cons of it, but it doesn't mean he can't try to retain some semblance of still being in the honeymoon phase how many years later.

He peppers Soonyoung's brow with the softest of kisses, tries to hide his smile when she wrinkles her nose and bats his face away like a cat. He tries it again, harder, this time, nipping at the shell of her ear, the curve of her jaw. He just wants to eat her up.

He thumbs at the bottom of the oversized shirt she'd pulled on before they slept— he'd locked the door behind them, but she'd just stared at him with volumes of judgment like she couldn't believe he wouldn't put it past their children to be incapable of learning how to pick a lock— and he hikes up the hem until it bunches around the dip of her waist, the faint hint of a scar from the emergency C-section they'd had to put her under; he lets his palm rest above it, for a moment, before he rubs at the skin with a softness that feels a little – just a little – like an apology. Or worship.

Soonyoung wakes up when he's sucking a bruise into her hip, and she looks so sleepy-soft that he's almost tempted to just hold her close and pet her hair until she falls asleep. Whatever indecision he has, it's lost in the slow, pleased hum she lets out, spreading her thighs to make room for him and hooking her ankles around his nape.

"Morning," she whispers, and shivers when he cranes his neck down to shower kisses along the inside of her thigh, the soft pucker of her folds. "Mmm. Always a great way to wake up."

He traces its shape with his fingers, teasing; he watches her follow the movement with a reflexive twitch of her hips. "It's been a while since we had a bit of time to ourselves," says Wonwoo. He slips a finger inside her, thrusting shallowly before fucking into her, knuckle-deep; he can hear her breath turn labored, heavy, as strained as the slightest jerk of her body, the way her muscles contract and clench around his finger. When he pulls away, she follows after him with a whine; already, he misses her heat, her wetness, and he settles back between her legs with a wolfish smile.

"Tease," she tells him, and he'd show her exactly how much longer he can draw it out, but he's a man with a mission and realistically he only has about fifteen minutes left to put his mouth on her and get her to come before the kids barge into the room and the pets start yapping and wailing their heads off. Suddenly he remembers why, exactly, they'd both insisted on locks.

He lets the tentative kisses along her folds turn into licks, wet, intent, and she gasps, hips rocking forward to meet his mouth; the grip she has on the top of his head is mildly painful when her fingers fist into his hair, and she's so hot, so open, Wonwoo, just wants to do this forever and fuck into her with his fingers, his tongue, his cock and—

"Mom," Bongsun roars from outside the door, tiny fists banging at the wood in time with the dog's excited barking. "I'm hungryyyy."

— fuck their lives so much. With a frantic jerk, Soonyoung kicks his shoulders away, yanking her shirt down and feeling around the side of the bed for the boy shorts he'd peeled off of her last night. Nothing is a more effective contraception than twin boys. This is _exactly_ why those two don't have a younger brother or sister just yet.

"Just a minute, honey," Soonyoung calls out. "I'll be out in a bit! Why don't you wake up your brother and head to the kitchen?"

"I'm right here," Bongki warbles, sounding grumpy, but not as put-out as Wonwoo feels right now, nursing a boner and curling up into the rapidly cooling side of Soonyoung's bed, bereft of body heat and closeness. "Why is the door locked?"

"Hoshi must have locked it last night," Soonyoung lies.

 _I can't believe you're comparing me to a cat now_ , Wonwoo mouths. Soonyoung rolls her eyes, but just tugs her underwear back on and forages around for a comb. Wonwoo watches the swell of her ass from under the shirt, how it tapers into the expanse of her legs, littered red with bruises from his mouth. He groans and tries to suffocate his face with a pillow instead.

"Hoshi's right here," Bongki points out. The traitorous cat lets out a pitiful meow.

"They're too smart for their own good," Soonyoung mutters, running a comb through her hair and wincing as she tries to work out the knots. "I blame you for this, by the way."

"I thought children got their intelligence from their mother," says Wonwoo, dryly.

"They're half yours too," says Soonyoung. She prods the edge of the comb at his cheek. "If nothing else, they definitely got your stubbornness."

"If I were stubborn, I would have kept eating you out and let our children starve," Wonwoo grumbles.

"I'm glad you're finally learning how to share me," Soonyoung coos. She presses a wet, smacking kiss to his cheek, one he doesn't wipe off, even if it tingles. Wonwoo just lets out a loud, aggravated sigh.

Soonyoung unlocks the door to their room, and in barrel the biggest threats to Wonwoo's sex life, all barely coming up to his waist. Soonyoung gathers Bongki and Bongsun in her arms, gives them equally obnoxious kisses on their foreheads, and lets them crawl over to Wonwoo for a softer kiss hello, the cat and dog circling around their legs before settling into bed at Wonwoo's feet.

It almost makes the slightest irritation in Wonwoo melt into fondness, when he watches the droop of Bongki's eyelids threatening to flutter closed, the tug of a playful grin at Bongsun's lips that almost match the one on Soonyoung's. _My best boys_ , Soonyoung calls them. _Your only boys_ , Wonwoo likes to retort, but it still makes his heart clench, full of feeling, warmth.

"Now, who wants pancakes?" Soonyoung asks, hands on her hips, and they scoot out of bed, eager to clamber off and abandon him, the moment gone as quickly as it comes. He watches them tug at the hem of Soonyoung's shirt, pulling at her to match their pace, and she follows them with a hand over the top of their heads, not even looking back.

"Guess it's just you and me, huh?" He tells Hoshi and Pompom. Hoshi blinks at him, and slinks under the bed. Pompom just starts digging at the covers, nails clawing into the mattress with obsessive glee.

He just sighs.

"One day, you'll miss them when they move out," he reminds himself, and trudges off to the bathroom for the coldest shower he can get to will his hard-on away.

 

 

The week filming starts, Wonwoo says goodbye to approximately three things. One is an attempt at privacy, if not for himself then for the kids. The other is Soonyoung, who gleefully packs her bags to head off to a weekend trip to Jeju Island with Junhui, who's also left Jihoon at the more merciful clutches of their two children and Studio Ghibli DVDs.

What he doesn't expect, though, is having to say goodbye to his dignity on film, even if he really should have known better.

"One more time, dad!" Bongsun chants, clapping his hands together beside a gleeful Mingyu. "More! More! More!"

Wonwoo's in front of the TV, attempting a poor imitation of Sailor Mars' transformation sequence. He'd had to do her catchphrase _thrice_ , mostly because Bongsun kept saying it wasn't convincing enough and Mingyu kept egging him on, and now here Wonwoo is in a long wig and costume and deeply regretting ever letting Soonyoung buy them for a Halloween Party a few years back, even if he _did_ end up living the NSFW wet dreams of teenage boys all over. Never again.

("I can't believe I'm having sex with Sailor Mars," said Wonwoo, reverently thumbing at the hem of Soonyoung's skirt and watching the muscles on Soonyoung's thighs flex with every movement.

"Oh my god, shut up before I climb off of you and leave you with blue balls," said Soonyoung, but she was laughing, then, and just swallowed his muffled protests with a kiss that turned into an aborted moan when he rolled his hips upward.

Nine months later, they had the twins in July. Wonwoo's never telling them that story in the future, if only to preserve the sanctity of Sailor Moon. There are some lines he's never going to cross, especially when it comes to Jihoon's daughter's favorite show.)

On the other side of the couch, though, Bongki is just staring at them all with a blank expression, the way he often does when he's cranky and irritated by everything and everyone but trying not to show it. Between Bongsun and Bongki, it's Bongsun that's a lot more vocal about the things he likes and doesn't like, but it's Bongki that tends to hold grudges and internalize more, which is something Soonyoung maintains is completely Wonwoo's fault.

"He gets that from you, I think," she tells him, every time Bongki stews in silence, knee-deep into yet another of his infamous sulks mostly caused by Bongsun, sometimes by Wonwoo, and never by Soonyoung. "He's a sensitive soul."

 _I'm in pain too_ , Wonwoo thinks, making a face as he steps out of the tiny skirt and smoothens his pants down. He looks at Mingyu's shit-eating grin and resists the urge to punch him. He settles for dumping the wig on top of Mingyu's head instead. _So much pain_.

"You look great in a skirt, hyung," says Mingyu, propping Bongsun up against his hip as Bongsun makes grabby hands at the end of the wig, impatient and eager to put anything and everything new into his mouth to see if it's edible. "Minghao totally agrees."

"If you sent your boyfriend pictures, I will strangle you in your sleep," says Wonwoo, through gritted teeth. "I know where you live."

"That's what you always say," says Mingyu, already desensitized after years of working with Wonwoo and constantly being on the receiving end of Soonyoung's fawning. "Bongsun-ah, that's not gonna be tasty. Do you want me to make you noodles instead?"

"You can cook?" Bongsun asks, awe-struck.

"Of course I can," says Mingyu.

"Mommy's right," Bongsun decides. "You'd make the best daddy ever."

Mingyu laughs nervously, just as Wonwoo glowers at him and makes slashing motions at his throat. "I'm sure your real daddy's much better," Mingyu lies through his teeth. Already the darling of the industry and yet none of them know Mingyu's capable of being an egoistic brat. It's a wonder he and Minghao are still a thing. "Right, Bongki-ah?"

"I hate this," says Bongki, despondently. He looks around the living room with wary, suspicious eyes. "Why are there so many uncles in our house?"

 _Oh shit_ , Mingyu mouths at Wonwoo, right as they trade alarmed looks. No wonder the show tries to rope the kids into production so early; the older they get, the faster they pick up on things that _aren't_ normal to the eye. Any other day, Wonwoo would feel proud, but right now he's just close to panicking.

"I like them," Bongsun muses, sucking at his thumb. "They give me candy like mom does."

It's apparently the wrong thing to say, because Bongki's face scrunches up, looking distressed and close to tears. "Where's mom?" Bongki frets, a heartbreaking whine that has Wonwoo scrambling over to him and holding him close. "I miss her. Bring mom back!"

Great. Not even done with the first week of filming and already Wonwoo has a nuclear meltdown in his hands. This is definitely going to be in their first episode, he can tell. He can already see the headlines: _JEON WONWOO, WORST PARENT IN THE WORLD_. He hates this show already.

"Mom's out on a trip," says Wonwoo, rubbing Bongki's back. Bongki erupts into tears, and Wonwoo has a brief flashback of having to wake up at the dead of the night to calm down a crying Bongki the first few months, all while Bongsun slept like a log in the crib beside him. "Don't cry, Bongki-yah, she'll be back before you know it."

"Yeah," says Mingyu, nervously hitching a quiet Bongsun up in his arms. "It'll be just like your dad taking a trip away for a few days for work."

"I don't care about dad," says Bongki, and Mingyu looks even more panicked at that, throwing a helpless look at Wonwoo. Wonwoo stiffens in place, hand strangely heavy against Bongki's tiny back. "I want mom," Bongki's just sobbing outright now, taking large gulps of air in between his wailing. "I want her _now_!"

 _I want her too_ , Wonwoo thinks, desperately, but tries to steel himself, ignoring the urge to just give into Bongki and spontaneously take a flight out to Soonyoung's hotel. He closes his eyes, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Rational, adult thoughts, he reminds himself. Do _not_ get suckered in.

"Jeon Bongki," he says, sternly, "stop crying, or you'll have to take a time-out."

There's a moment where Bongki stays stock-still and looks at Wonwoo with wide eyes, tears pricking the corner of his eyes, and like this, Wonwoo's struck, time and again, that Soonyoung's not lying when she tells him they look more like him than they do her. But that moment is as fleeting as the faint spark of hope collecting like air in Wonwoo's chest; Bongki just starts sobbing louder.

Wonwoo has him sit in a corner of the room until he calms down, and when Wonwoo wipes his tears and snot away with a tissue and gives him a cookie, Bongki doesn't look at him or even take the snack, no. He doesn't raise his head even when Mingyu says his goodbyes, or after the staff have shut their cameras off and headed home.

He only lets himself fall back into Wonwoo's arms when Wonwoo has a video call open with Soonyoung on the other end of the line, and Bongsun keeps fussing at the tight squeeze but settles down as quietly as Bongki when Soonyoung's face pops up on the screen. Soonyoung coos over the three of them huddled together, her best boys, her only boys, and Bongsun chatters on about how cool Uncle Mingyu is, how pretty daddy looks as Sailor Mars. The whole time, through the noise and laughter, Bongki's just quiet, holding up the tablet reverently and thumbing at Soonyoung's face with shaking hands.

Wonwoo helps him hold it up, palms cradling Bongki's tiny knuckles. It makes Wonwoo feel that maybe Soonyoung's half-right. Maybe he really needs this show more than he thinks he does.

 

 

"I'm bad with temper tantrums," Wonwoo confesses, in the side interview. "A lot of times, my wife makes it look like she's always the good cop, but in reality I'm the one that doesn't know how to handle it when my kids start crying all over the place. It doesn't even have to be anything big— they could be crying over someone dying in One Piece and I'd still be at a loss with how to make them happy.

"I think it's easier to do that with adults. Kids, they don't really know how to mask their feelings as much, but adults— we're better at compartmentalizing, you know? Keeping things in even if we just want to let it all out."

He pauses to mull over his words. Scratches at the back of his neck, and sighs. "Bongsun throws a lot more tantrums than Bongki, but between the two of them, it's probably Bongsun that has a higher EQ, really. He takes after his mom, that way. Bongki's just like me, when I was younger. Even now, really. It's weird. They're both identical twins, but they're so different when you get to know them.

"They've got one thing in common with me, though," Wonwoo confesses, letting out a crack of a smile, the first time in the entire fifteen minutes they'd started interviewing him. It's the same wistful smile he used to be known for, when he was much younger and starring in high school romances as the pining first love. "We're all a bunch of idiots when it comes to their mom."


	2. Chapter 2

Temporarily pacified by video calls with Soonyoung, Bongki seems to eventually come to accept that there's no way out of this part of his life any time soon and resistance is futile. He takes to sleeping in the rest of the time and studiously ignoring the film crew as he plays with his Legos, while Bongsun, on the other hand, seems to get in touch with his inner attention whore and flowers under the cameras and the presence of the staff noonas with more ease than Bongki.

Unfortunately, most of his antics seem to be less of the innocuous, entertaining cuteness that most children on the show go for, and more akin to testing the limits of Wonwoo's patience. When Bongsun had realized that the fastest way to get attention from the grown-ups was through mayhem and chaos, Wonwoo had wanted nothing more than to give up and beg Soonyoung to please, _please come back before Bongsun starts shaving off Hoshi's fur, don't you love your cat, Soonyoung-ah?_ He'd done it to Pompom when Wonwoo had made the unfortunate mistake of letting himself get distracted by Bongki staring raptly at a rerun of one of Wonwoo's old dramas, and Wonwoo had to explain to the groomer why, exactly, Pompom was doused in pink paint and sporting an uneven cut when they'd just been there the week before. Impulse control, Bongsun had none of it whatsoever.

If nothing else, at least they managed to get footage of Bongsun and Bongki cooing over the animals at the animal clinic, the PD had assured him. It's a meager consolation.

"Why didn't we get a girl again," Wonwoo wonders aloud, stirring milk into his coffee. They're in a rented cat cafe with Jihoon, who's brought along his mildly more behaved demon spawn. So far, the kids are too busy playing with the more patient older cats, though Bongki's been quietly petting a fluff ball of a kitten that vaguely resembles Hoshi; Wonwoo will have to remember to check their bags and coats later on just in case they get accused of catnapping. He'll also have to steel himself against their combined puppy dog eyes in the event they decide they want to keep yet another cat in the house, even if they never even feed, bathe, or clean up after any of them. Responsibility seems to be a lesson that's too far-off from their realm of comprehension that Wonwoo's constantly worried they'll have none of it later on.

"Be careful what you wish for," says Jihoon, dryly, as he pets a Maine Coone on his lap. Wonwoo spends more time worrying about the kids than Jihoon, really, but with kids like Jihoon's, he guesses Jihoon can afford to be that way. Wonwoo looks at Junjie, who's rolling around the wooden floor with a fairly docile ragdoll, and then at Ming Ming, who fluffs up pillows and assembles them in a semi-circle around the corner she's claimed for herself like the tyrannical princess everyone's sure Minghao is raising her to be. So far, no one's screaming, crying, or bribing the staff into under-the-table deals about possibly bringing home a kitten when no one's looking— it's more than Wonwoo can say about his own kids, after all. "I never want Ming Ming to grow up. If she starts asking about periods, I'm gonna make her bug Jun instead."

"You sure you don't wanna do it to Minghao?" 

" _Please_ , he probably already has a Youtube playlist ready for her," Jihoon snorts, already rolling his eyes. None of them would put it past him; ever since Junhui decided to name her eldest after her favorite younger brother-figure with Jihoon's (grudgingly given) consent, Minghao had taken on Ming Ming's care and feeding with the air of an experienced tiger mom that would have made Jihoon impressed if it didn't mean having to witness hearing his daughter's first words to be Minghao's name. Mingyu finds it terribly cute. Jihoon just finds it terrible, period. 

At least Ming Ming never called anyone else dad, Wonwoo thinks, sourly. When they were three, Soonyoung had ended up laughing her head off when the twins kept confusing other people for Wonwoo. It hadn't been Wonwoo's greatest parenting moment, not even by his own abysmally low standards.

("Daddy!" Bongsun exclaimed, pointing wildly at the TV screen where Soonyoung was marathon-ing Mingyu's latest drama series.

"Daddy," chirped Bongki, reaching out for Jisoo after Wonwoo bribed Jisoo into buying cake, a bouquet of flowers, and a Shinee concert DVD for Soonyoung's birthday in his unfortunate absence as a (groveling) apology.

"Daddy?" They asked, confused, when Minghao showed up with Ming Ming in his arms, ready for a play date.

"Babe, I think we need to talk about you taking a break before our children start calling Jihoon their father," said Soonyoung, in between crinkly-eyed snorts.

"Why does this keep happening to me," Wonwoo groaned, and he opened his laptop to check out the earliest flight schedule he could get away with, before his kids forgot he existed.)

"I think I could have handled two girls," says Wonwoo, resting his cheek against the surface of the table. "Girls are supposed to be more behaved aren't they?"

"I don't think it's gender that's the issue here," says Jihoon, raising an eyebrow at him.

Jihoon's kind of an asshole like that. Now he wishes the cameras weren't trained on the kids, if only to curb Jihoon's tongue.

"Of all the things you have to agree with Minghao on, it had to be your thoughts on my parenting skills," says Wonwoo.

"I'm not saying it's all you," Jihoon says, even as Wonwoo can hear the underlying _but I'm not saying it isn't you either_. "Soonyoung's too relaxed with them sometimes, and you're just overly indulgent." He takes a sip of his coffee. "Especially after a work trip."

"Fuck you, I'm a great disciplinarian," says Wonwoo.

"Sure, but your constant absenteeism makes you feel guilty, which also makes you lenient," Jihoon points out. 

"… You've been talking to Minghao again, haven't you?"

"Using you as a point of comparison is doing wonders to make me look like a great parent," says Jihoon, loftily. "I mean, just look at that."

He points at Bongsun, and Wonwoo internally groans. Bongsun's tugging at the ear of a disgruntled-looking cat like he hasn't managed to learn how to be gentle even after almost getting scratched by Hoshi the first few times he did it. Wonwoo hates that his kids just conveniently forget everything that don't align with their interests, even if it means the difference between avoiding a trip to the ER or having to hold someone's hand through an antiseptic-induced screaming fit. "Bongsun, stop that before one of you gets hurt!"

"But the kitty is nice," Bongsun argues. He tries to reach for the cat's tail this time, but it manages to dodge him and lets out a scornful meow. 

_I mean the cat, not you_ , Wonwoo thinks, but settles for pushing himself off of his seat to coax Bongsun to eat a slice of cake instead and not. You know. Cause mayhem and chaos ending in blood, tears and the threat of rabies in the process. He's taking them to a normal cafe next time, god damn it.

In the end, Jihoon manages to get a lot of pictures of the cats, and Wonwoo prays his children's screen time ends up so heavily edited it makes them look like angels or cat whisperers instead of the terrorists they are. Ming Ming's gained the loyalty of an army of cats, and Junjie falls asleep on the play mat with a tiny spotted kitten curled up against the top of his head. In comparison, Bongsun ends up with so much cat hair on his clothes he ends up sneezing the entire time, and Bongki's grown too attached to his original victim that he digs his heels into the rug when they're about to leave and goes through the five stages of grief all in the span of an impressive (and extended) one and a half hours. They'll make an actor out of him yet, at least. It's a very, very small comfort, especially when Bongki shrinks away from Wonwoo and curls up against Ming Ming's pillow fort instead.

"But she loves me," Bongki warbles, holding the black kitten close.

"I'm sure she loves her mom too," Wonwoo tries. "You wouldn't want to make her mom sad, right?"

Bongki's lower lip trembles, but he holds onto the kitten so hard it mewls and struggles to get away. "Can't I at least say goodbye to Soonyoungie?"

 _Oh great, he's named it already_ , is Wonwoo's first thought. _Oh fuck_ , he realizes one second later. _He named it_ after Soonyoung. Now he just feels like a jackass.

"Five more minutes," Wonwoo relents. Bongki scurries away, tucking the kitten close to his chest.

Jihoon makes the sound of a whip with his mouth. If they didn't have at least three different cameras aimed their way, Wonwoo wouldn't have any qualms throwing the rest of his coffee over Jihoon's head. _Think of the money and the good publicity_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Soonyoung's chants into his mind. _Better yet, think of how Jun could probably kick your ass if you did_.

Wonwoo tightens his grip around the handle of his cup and sucks up his wounded pride instead, because he's nothing if not professional. He raises his head to scowl at Jihoon, but he's ignored; Junjie's toddled over to Jihoon, cradling a hairball in both palms, and Jihoon just cracks a smile and takes it with a mixture of genuine confusion and tacit acceptance that yes, this is his life now. Junjie beams at him and wordlessly goes off to trail after his sister, who's managed to rope at least three different cats into an imaginary tea party on the side. So many children, not enough eyes.

Jihoon doesn't seem to be too disturbed, though. Of course he isn't. He has perfectly spoiled sweet, non-dysfunctional children that don't secretly match-make their mother with any male figure in their lives. Wonwoo's trying not to be bitter about that.

Five minutes turns to another hour, and Wonwoo's exhausted by the time they wrap up filming for the day and wait for the vans to arrive at the front desk. Bongsun's sleeping in Wonwoo's arms, drooling all over his shoulder and wrinkling the front of his jacket, and Bongki's off to the side, cradling Wonwoo's phone close to his face as he plays 2048— the only way they could divert his attention long enough to get him away from the cat, really. Wonwoo isn't looking forward to seeing his phone bill by the end of the month if Bongki decides to download something else in his sulking. Passive aggressive tendencies, they run in his family like a curse.

He turns to Jihoon, carefully hefting Bongsun's weight up in his arms. "Are we still on for next week?" He asks.

"Depends," says Jihoon, after a long, measured pause. He looks at Bongki, and then at Wonwoo. "Do your kids still hate my wife?"

"God, don't remind me," says Wonwoo, pursing his lips. One of the unfortunate side effects of working with Junhui semi-regularly is that Soonyoung keeps watching the racier dramas ("I can't believe you get to hook up with Jun on screen," she bemoans, regularly crushing his pride. "Junhui's so _hot_.") and exposing the kids to scenes of Wonwoo kissing someone who _isn't_ Soonyoung. They've yet to warm up to Junhui, even as she turns the puppy dog eyes up every time they're around. Well, Bongsun would be easier to sway, if only Bongki didn't make horrified noises and throw him looks of betrayal every time he took a piece of candy from Junhui. Bongsun's deceitfully pragmatic, his sense of loyalty highly skewed and confusing, but at least there's hope. Bongki, though... not so much. "Soonyoung should be here by then, so it shouldn't be too bad."

"I'll make sure to keep any sharp, pointy objects away, then," says Jihoon.

" _Please_ ," says Wonwoo, begging, now. He can't wait for this show to end.

 

 

In retrospect, if Wonwoo has anyone to blame for Soonyoung's obsession with the show, he can _probably_ pin it on the Lees. Jihoon hasn't been part of the cast for long, but he's so comfortable with the setup already that he feels like an old hand at this game, sitting quietly as Ming Ming puts ladybug clips on his hair and Junjie starts an impromptu staring game with his father. Jihoon's not that great at being outwardly expressive, but there's something in his awkwardness that seems to make children like him more than they like _Mingyu_. Wonwoo doesn't get it.

"Uncle Jihoon's cool," says Bongsun, shrugging, as Wonwoo grills him about it while he's making dinner. Or, at least, attempting to. He's petting Hoshi, who's taken up residence on his lap and napping with admirable indifference despite the fact that Bongsun's _just_ single-handedly used Pompom as a personal canvas for his creativity not even twenty-four hours ago. Wonwoo doesn't know if it's sheer laziness or just Stockholm syndrome at play, but either way he's a little apprehensive and keeps an eye out for any sudden movements. "I like him."

" _Jihoon_?" Wonwoo repeats, trying and failing to keep the incredulity out of his tone. The juk he's heating up in the pot bubbles when it comes to a boil, as if to protest his skepticism; he makes a face and turns the electric stove off before he has a repeat of the disaster that was his first attempt at making seaweed soup for Soonyoung the first birthday she had after they'd gotten together. He's had enough excitement for one day, he thinks.

The disbelief completely flies over Bongsun's head, though — between him and Bongki, it takes a while for him to pick up on less obvious social cues, dry humor and sarcasm beyond his realm of understanding. At least Wonwoo will have one less mouthy kid to worry about, when they get to the rebellious stage. He can only hope.

"He listens to me when I talk," says Bongsun. He pulls the plate of apple slices Wonwoo had left on the table as a snack towards him, and then pushes it towards Bongki with a blank expression. Mingyu had taught Wonwoo how to make bunny shapes out of fruit when he'd dropped by, and while it had seemed to entertain the twins the first time Mingyu did it, the magic seems to have worn off by now.

"I listen to you too," says Wonwoo before he can stop himself.

"Well, he's quiet."

" _I'm_ quiet," says Wonwoo.

"No, you're not," says Bongsun. "You talk all the time!"

Bongki looks at the ceiling impassively, still sulking after yet another crying fit when they had to leave the cat café without his favorite, and he's told Wonwoo he hated him and never wanted to speak to him again no less than three times since they'd gotten back home. If this is how Bongki is as a kid, Wonwoo's really not looking forward to dealing with him as a teenager.

"Uncle Jihoon isn't annoying," says Bongki, sulkily picking at a piece of fruit.

" _Bongki_ ," he says, sharply. Bongki just kicks his feet under the table, blinking innocently up at him.

Bongki's smart. Wonwoo knows he's smart. He's always a step ahead of Bongsun when it comes to learning things, but it's just that he can't ever be bothered to. Wonwoo just wishes Bongki never learned how to be a mouthy brat. Watching all of Wonwoo's shows where he'd been a smartass teenager clearly hasn't been a good influence on him.

Still, it's not like he'd even _said_ Wonwoo was annoying, just _implied_ it. He almost wants to dunk his head under the sink and scream. He can't believe he's arguing against his own kid and comparing himself to _Jihoon_ , and the icing on the cake is that he's _losing_. There is no justice in this world.

He opens his mouth, ready to send Bongki straight to his room, but the sound of Pompom barking down the hallway has Bongki squirming to get out of his seat and straight to the chaos, the chair scraping on the floor with a sharp noise that makes Wonwoo close his eyes and sigh over the impending scratch marks on the hardwood floor. He almost knocks Bongsun out of his own chair in his rush, but Bongsun just throws the rest of his apple at his brother's retreating back, unfazed.

"I think mom's back," says Bongsun, the calmest Wonwoo's seen him all week outside of nap time. He cranes his head towards Wonwoo and asks, "Can I still sleep in your room in case the monsters come back?"

"Sure," says Wonwoo, defeated. His idea of aching limbs and soiled sheets after having kids have been drastically redefined into getting kicked by a wriggling kid and their utter inability to wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Laundry, Salonpas, and sleeping pills have been his best friends and constant companions since they'd learned how to crawl out of bed and into Wonwoo's and Soonyoung's.

"Yay," says Bongsun, beaming up at him, and takes it as his cue to abandon ship and run to Soonyoung.

Not for the first (or last) time, Wonwoo feels vaguely like he just got scammed.

 

 

"Oh thank god," is the first thing Soonyoung says when she sees him, "you're still alive."

"Ha, ha, ha," says Wonwoo, drily. He crosses his arms over his chest, trying to look intimidating despite the apron draped over him. "You have so little faith in me."

"I have _absolutely_ no faith in you," says Soonyoung, stepping closer to press a placating kiss to his jaw. It's a little awkward with Bongki in her arms and clinging to her like an octopus, refusing to let his feet touch the floor, but Soonyoung manages to do it with ease, unbothered.

"It's only been two days," he reminds her. Two days too long, he thinks, as he braces his palms against her waist, keeping her in place.

"Technically one, since Mingyu was there to hold your hand through the first one," she teases. She narrows her eyes at him, all while smirking at the way his lips twitch. "And Jihoonie babysat you and the kids, didn't he?"

"Don't remind me," Wonwoo groans, pride still wounded. Soonyoung titters and nips at his earlobe, purposeful, intent, and Wonwoo shudders and tries to press closer to her but Bongki whines and complains about getting squished in the middle. With a sigh, Wonwoo pushes himself away and lets her go.

"And you used to joke about what a disaster he'd be around children," she says, holding Bongki close and stroking the back of his head with soothing fingers. Wonwoo's not jealous of his kids. He's not.

"I should have realized he's had practice with you for years," he retorts, feigning otherwise. He can't quite keep the sulking out of his tone, for all the items in his portfolio and the awards stowed away in the display cabinet at his parents' home. So much for that.

If Soonyoung notices, she doesn't point it out. She just shrugs, not even bothering to contest it. "How do you think I made it to adulthood alive?"

"Sheer luck and stubbornness?"

"I'd make you sleep on the couch for that one, but even my mom thinks so too."

"Guess I'll have to send Jihoon a fruit basket then," says Wonwoo. "I mean, I wouldn't have met you without him."

"Yeah," says Soonyoung, smiling so hard the corner of her eyes crinkle with glee. "You really, really should."

 

 

Contrary to popular opinion. Wonwoo doesn't really think Jihoon's insufferable. That title goes to whatever young idol Soonyoung's fawning over at any given moment, to the point that Bongki and Bongsun dutifully recite their names and mime along the choreo when they're on the music shows. "He should just shave his head and go to the military," Wonwoo's said more than once, sounding exactly like Soonyoung's father did when he'd met Wonwoo — the irony isn't lost to him, no.

At best, Wonwoo might even call Jihoon one of his best friends, by sheer osmosis and extension of Soonyoung. At worst, though, Jihoon's the main cause of his current suffering, Wonwoo thinks, as he wakes up at seven in the morning with Bongsun's foot in his jugular and the camera recording the embarrassment of his pained grunt and subsequent acquaintance with the carpeted floor after getting kicked off of the bed by his own son. Maybe he should take Bongsun to a football match. With legs like that, it might even be his true calling.

He pushes himself off of the floor, and takes one look at Bongsun sprawled out on the bed, Bongki nothing but a lump under the comforter and Soonyoung sandwiched between them, snoring. He opts for looking for Tiger Balm for his neck and dunking his head under the shower instead to work out the kinks in his back.

He still doesn't understand why they even need to have cameras installed in the bathroom, but he ignores the fixture and tries to find a blind spot in the shower. Honestly, he doesn’t know how Jihoon does it. Out of all of them, Jihoon's the one who prefers his privacy the most, opting to hide out at home like a hermit on any and all days off and holidays he can get. For the longest time, he'd skipped out on all the company parties and black tie events until Junhui swooped into his life and gave him little to no choice in becoming her arm candy for the night. Even then, Jihoon had been mostly uncomfortable under all the scrutiny, the paparazzi. Jihoon and cameras just don't equate in his head.

If anyone told them _Jihoon_ would be their entry point into the show, none of them would have believed it — except maybe Junhui, for whom hope sprang eternal, and who'd been the only reason Jihoon had even agreed to doing it. Minghao had even started a running bet of babysitting time that Jihoon would spectacularly ruin his image on film after hearing the news from Junhui, but he (and, by extension, Mingyu) had ended up hosting an impromptu weekend sleepover for the kids when Jihoon's approval ratings shot up within the season, much to his (and everyone's collective) disbelief. No one bothers to make bets involving Jihoon anymore. They're not sure if they can even win.

("It's practically cheating if you have kids that look as cute as Jun," Soonyoung explained, once, looking worse for wear as she tried to wrangle a wriggling Bongsun into the onesie pajamas Wonwoo's mother bought them for their birthday. Cute, but impractical; they'd worn them only once, just to take pictures for the grandparents, and never again. "Jihoon just got lucky."

"Okay, but this still doesn't explain why you still want me to go," said Wonwoo, looking up long enough from memorizing his script to raise an eyebrow at her, equal parts a question and loaded with judgment.

"Documentation purposes and blackmail fodder," said Soonyoung, cheerily, and handed Bongsun over to him. "Now time to read them a bedtime story, daddy."

"Can we read One Piece?" Bongsun asked, blinking up at him.

Wonwoo looked at Soonyoung with wide eyes. "What kind of bedtime stories have you been reading them?"

" _Classics_ ," Soonyoung scoffed. _Clearly_.

"Somehow, I don't think we have the same definition of what constitutes as a classic or not," said Wonwoo, with a sigh. He put his script aside and got up to look for Bongki, too.

In the end, he ended up reading Goodnight Moon, and _then_ two volumes of One Piece instead. He'll never win against manhwa, ever.)

Still, Wonwoo has to admit that Jihoon isn't a _terrible_ father. Even Minghao, who'd been so dead-set on finding any and all faults in Jihoon from even before he and Junhui started dating, couldn't exactly refute it when Jihoon had children wrapped around his finger, as if feeling his awkwardness keenly and cutting him some slack for it. That's the only possible explanation they could all come up with, when Jihoon's content to just stare back at a baby instead of making funny faces or trying to make them laugh like _normal_ people do. That, or it's because Jihoon looks like a disgruntled cat all the time, and all babies like small, domestic animals, right? Right?

"You should try wearing cat ears," Junhui suggests, when they meet up for brunch before their read-through later that week. "Jihoonie used to wear all these animal headbands when Ming Ming started learning how to tell animals apart. It was cute."

"You _always_ think your husband's cute," says Wonwoo, trying not to sound as exhausted as he feels at ass o'clock in the morning without his first cup of coffee. The twins still refuse to sleep in their own beds, Bongsun because he's still stubbornly set on the idea that monsters are lurking under their bed, and Bongki because apparently separation anxiety is hereditary and he still thinks if he lets Soonyoung out of his sight she'll go away again on a two-day trip and then maybe never come back. His kids are _way_ too dramatic about everything. "Your opinion's invalid."

"Because he _is_!" Junhui defends, the smile on her face turning cloyingly fond. Wonwoo just wants to gag into his ham sandwich, and settles for stealing fries from Mingyu's plate instead.

"Great," says Mingyu, no doubt rolling his eyes behind his sunglasses. "You set noona off. Thanks a lot, hyung."

"Don't worry, Mingyu-ah," says Junhui, patting the back of his hand. "I still think Minghao is cute too."

"That really isn't helping your case," Wonwoo informs her. He gets a kick to his knee from her very sharp, very pointy heels for it. Years of working with her (and, to some extent, living with Soonyoung) have ingrained in him enough tolerance for pain that he barely blinks.

"Well, it's not my fault I have a type," says Junhui.

"You should have seen her the first time she watched the episode where Minghao babysits Ming Ming," says Mingyu. "I've never seen her salivate over anything so much, I had to call Jihoon-hyung to get her to chill and stop being thirsty."

"As if you weren't doing the same thing too!"

"Minghao's _my_ boyfriend, I have an excuse to fawn over him being adorable with children!"

Wonwoo tunes them out as they alternate between bickering over their respective significant others and commiserating over their combined powers of cuteness. Not that Wonwoo's ever understood it— as far as he's concerned, Soonyoung at her worst is infinitely more endearing than any of those asshats, but he's fighting a losing battle if he even says it, drowned out by Junhui and Mingyu's more energetic displays and declarations of love. It's just not worth the effort.

"What are your plans when we swing by next week?" Wonwoo cuts in before Junhui starts contemplating using the cutlery in more creative ways and Mingyu starts getting on Junhui's case about all the baby pictures of Minghao she has yet to delete on her memory card. "Are you gonna stay for the playdate?"

Junhui wilts, and Wonwoo almost regrets even asking. "I'm sure the kids will get along better with less people around," she says, despondently.

 _Way to go, hyung_ , Mingyu mouths. He stuffs a fry into his mouth when Wonwoo glowers at him.

Junhui's always loved kids — at every fan meet, she's the first one to volunteer for a selca with any children in line, and every time they have to work with child actors, she makes it a point to coo over and pamper them off-set. The only ones that seem to be immune to her earnest intentions are Wonwoo's kids, and no amount of expensive, thoughtful gifts on their birthday seem to defrost their standoffishness, to her dismay.

Proof that Wonwoo's genes are stronger than Soonyoung's, Minghao always says, half-joking, half-not. Asshole.

"Soonyoung was planning on going to a spa," says Wonwoo, biting the inside of his cheek. Never mind that he'd been intent on abandoning his kids to Jihoon and maybe get a bit of alone time with Soonyoung, then — he's always been weak to tears. "Maybe you could come with her instead."

Junhui perks up, the slump of her shoulders lifting at the prospect. "Maybe," says Junhui, visibly more relieved. Wonwoo almost feels his lips curl into a smile, at least until Junhui looks up at him from under her lashes, coyly. "We could wash each other's backs, just like we used to every time we went to a hot spring."

"Why do you hate me," says Wonwoo, flatly.

"Sounds like a porno," says Mingyu. "Or Soonyoung-noona's fantasies come to life."

"Because it _is_."

"Don't worry, Wonwoo," says Junhui, preening. "I'll be gentle. I promise."

"You are a terrible person," Wonwoo informs her. 

He makes sure to bite her lip hard enough to bleed later on, when they have a kiss scene. Junhui just laughs at him, wiping her mouth like it's nothing. Forget Jihoon, he thinks. _Junhui's_ the source of all his suffering.

"Keep looking at me like that and Dispatch will think we're having an affair, Wonwoo-sshi," says Junhui, brightly.

"I'm bribing the writers to let me shoot your character next time," Wonwoo promises.

"Less teeth, more tongue, sunbaenim," Junhui coos, patting his cheek.

Wonwoo groans and gives up. He just can't win.

 

 

They wrap up work a little before eight, and he has to beg off after a round of drinks with a mild headache. Mingyu offers to drop him off, but he finds himself in the back of Jihoon's car when he picks Junhui up from the studio instead, the low hum of their conversation and the slow ballad from the radio coaxing him to sleepiness even as he feels an ache in his stomach.

"You okay, Wonwoo?" Jihoon asks him, peering at him from the rearview mirror. Junhui glances at him, too, and clicks her tongue.

"You're turning into a lightweight, Wonwoo-yah," says Junhui. She passes him a bottle of green tea, and he takes it with a clipped thank you.

"If I pass out, wake me up before we get to the gate," he groans. Junhui gives him a mock salute, and turns back to her husband to ask him about his day.

Watching from the backseat of their car, they remind him a little of him and Soonyoung, when they were younger and she was his manager full-time — they'd drive through the streets in near-silence, Soonyoung keeping her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, and Wonwoo looking at her, only at her. Sometimes, he'd sneak glances from the mirror, and sometimes he'd give up the pretense and just stare at her long enough that she'd push her palm onto the side of his face and whine at him to _stop being a creepster and focus on your phone like a normal person, Wonwoo, what the hell_!

(And sometimes— only sometimes— she'd pull over on the side of the road, yank her seatbelt off and clamber over him; she'd settle onto his lap, thighs bracketing his hips, and swallow whatever words he'd meant to say up in a deep, messy kiss.)

They don't really get those moments anymore, not really. It really is true what they say, about missing things you didn't know meant something bigger than you thought they were. He doesn't know if he regrets it.

 

 

The apartment's dark when he gets home, the only light coming from the foyer and the glowing neon green numbers of the digital clock. The glow-in-the-dark stars Soonyoung had stuck onto the walls from the living room and leading up to the twins' bedroom guide his path enough that all he really needs is the backlight of his phone, enough for him to not stumble into any pieces of furniture or wayward toys left abandoned in their wake. The door to Bongki and Bongsun's room is shut, but he peeks through the door to check on the kids anyway.

Bongsun's flat on his chest, limbs askew like a sprawling starfish and Pompom spooning his side; Bongki's swathed in his own blankets, only the top of his hair peeking out, with Hoshi curled around the rounded curve of his head, purring in his sleep. There's a stack of manhwa on the bedside table they share, right next to the lamp they never really use. Soonyoung must have left them there before they'd fallen asleep.

He crosses the room to drape the blanket on the floor over Bongsun, and drags a pillow closer to Bongki's reach. He smooths down their bedhead, and follows the trail of his fingers with a soft, fleeting kiss, little more than a sigh— not of frustration, but relief.

Hoshi stirs awake, eyes cracking open to peer at him. He puts a finger over his mouth and whispers, "Stay." Somedays, the cat barely bothers to listen to him, content to follow its own pace and go along with its whims. Now, at least, Hoshi just shuts his eyes and noses at Bongki's hair before laying his head back down to the pillow.

He watches the rise and fall of Bongki and Bongsun's chests for a minute, counting the seconds in between their breathing. When they were born, they had to be kept in the NICU, weighing a little under the normal range. They'd been so, so small, so soft and tender to the touch that Wonwoo was almost afraid to hold them close, like they'd break if he even let out the slightest exhale. Older and bigger, now, and yet Wonwoo wonders if he'll ever stop feeling like this, like he's always out of control and helpless, even if he wants to keep them close, keep them safe. Keep them happy.

It's hard.

He leaves the door ajar, and makes his way to his and Soonyoung's room. Soonyoung's sleeping on her side, curled up against the body pillow they'd bought when she was pregnant and laying on her back hurt like a bitch every time. It's a sight he's used to, but the nostalgia still hits hard, seeping into his bones. Something about drinking must make him feel maudlin, he guesses. He takes his cap and his glasses off, setting them on the dresser.

"What are you doing," Soonyoung groggily asks him, waking up when he crawls into bed and snaking his arms around her torso, tightly.

He kisses her, once. She blinks at him, sleepy-soft, and he feels something in him clench, fluttering in his chest. How many years, and the longing is still familiar. The want. He kisses her again, and again, and again.

"Disinfection," he tells her when she pulls away for air, squirming and complaining about the heat and his breath smelling like the japchae he'd scarfed down in between scenes. "What? Can't I be clingy for once?"

"You're always clingy," she says, but sinks into his arms anyway without a word of protest. "Bongki gets that from you, by the way."

"It's a miracle they're sleeping in their own beds tonight."

"I had to climb into theirs and wait for them to fall asleep before I could get back here." She turns her head, working out a crick in her neck. "You'd think they'd fall asleep at the drop of a hat with the way they keep running around all day, but no."

"They're very tenacious. Just like you."

"Can't take all the credit for that," says Soonyoung, rolling her eyes. "You aren't any better."

"I'm not complaining." He lets his forehead rest against the hollow of her throat, breathing in the scent of her shampoo — it's the same one Bongki and Bongsun use, the one that smells like milk and baby powder. They must have taken a bath together, earlier. "Did you just take a shower?"

"Yeah," she says. She sniffs at the air, and then pinches his side, making him wince. "You should take one, too. I can't believe you're still wearing your coat."

"Don't wanna move," he grunts out. She elbows him, and he just holds onto her tighter. "I'm perfectly comfortable in my spot, thanks."

"You're so stubborn," she sighs.

"One of my redeeming traits," he says, shifting his head to nose at her cheek. "I think I could be convinced to take one, if you come with me."

"Do you use that line on all the girls, Jeon Wonwoo-sshi," she says, wrinkling her nose and trying not to laugh.

"Is it working?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Well, can't say I didn't try," says Wonwoo, peeling himself away and rolling off of her.

"Pervert," says Soonyoung. He can feel her smiling as she loops her arms around his waist, tucking her chin against his shoulder. "You're lucky you're cute."

"Speaking of perverts, I told Junhui she could go to the spa with you next week, and now she thinks she's getting a free pass to do whatever she wants to you," says Wonwoo. " _Please_ don't give her the satisfaction."

"And pass up on the chance to make Jihoon's head explode?" says Soonyoung, far more enthusiastic about the idea than even contemplating shower sex with Wonwoo. She's snickering now, the force of it making him shake. " _No way_."

"I was wrong," says Wonwoo, deadpan, craning his neck to look at her. "I should be warning Jihoon instead of you."

"At least there'll be two Jeons that can brag about making out with Wen Junhui," says Soonyoung, with a pout that Wonwoo just wants to touch and wipe off with his mouth. "You can't keep all the beautiful people to yourself, Wonwoo."

He thinks of Bongki and Bongsun in the other room, looking far more innocent and incapable of trouble in their sleep. He thinks of Hoshi and Pompom, content in their nest of blankets and limbs, never leaving one or the other out. He looks at Soonyoung, whose eyes are bright, the only light he can see up close in the darkness of the room. He wonders if this is what it feels like, to be greedy.

"Too late," he says, thumbing at her lower lip. "I already do."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HONGWEN!!!!!!!!! instead of finishing, this got longer than planned orz orz orz oh well. MOAR KIDFIC \o/


	3. Chapter 3

The weekend comes faster than Wonwoo expects it to. Then again, the past couple of days without Soonyoung dragged on for so long Wonwoo feels like he's aged a couple of years in the entire forty-eight hours of their separation, especially with temperamental children that keep making the producers rub their hands together with glee.

Being a parent is all about suffering. Okay, maybe around 90 percent, 75 _minimum_ , he'd argue, but then Bongki blinks up owlishly at him when Wonwoo wakes up to find the twins snuggling beside them under the covers the next morning, rubbing sleep out of his eyes and yawning. Not for the first time, Wonwoo's grateful he'd abandoned the habit of sleeping in the nude the minute they started to learn how to invade other people's beds. He cracks a smile at the sight, and it's not much of an effort to haul Bongki up and tuck Bongki's head under his chin. The smile widens when Bongki sags into his chest, just like Hoshi used to before they'd brought home the dog— the ultimate betrayal, and one he suspects Hoshi's never forgiven him for.

Of course, that could just be the paranoia talking. Wonwoo heaves a sigh and holds Bongki closer, breathing in the faint scent of baby powder and sweat. He hopes they never grow up. Two teenagers reeking of deodorant and an overkill of perfume reminds him too much of his mother complaining about him and Bohyuk until they'd gone into their twenties and eventually moved out, and even now she still tells Soonyoung embarrassing stories about him when he was younger, stuff he doesn't believe ever happened even if she swears it's all true.

He wonders if he'll be in that position someday. If they'll ever believe him. At least now he has the added benefit of having everything on tape, all the bad parts with the good. The thought makes something in his stomach clench, a fistful of air. Strange.

Still, it's not without its merits. Saturday morning is spent trying (and failing) to make proper pancakes from scratch to surprise Soonyoung, and while they'd ended up feeding the burnt scraps to the pets, it had at least given Soonyoung something to laugh about when she'd woken up; she'd rubbed at the pancake batter on Bongsun's cheek, wiping it off and sucking it off her thumb with the air of someone who'd lived with messy eaters all her life. She's had practice, from trying to force-feed her brother mud cakes when they were younger (and failing, thank god), and then Jihoon before he'd learned how to be less picky about what he ate.

"And then there's you," she says, wrinkling her nose at Wonwoo absent-mindedly spooning a lump of peanut butter and blueberry jam into his mouth. "The actual teenager in this relationship, really."

"I've had worse things in my mouth," says Wonwoo. From the corner of the room, one of the cameramen almost fumbles with the video cam in his hold, clearly flustered, and one of the PDs starts covering her face with her hands in embarrassment. Soonyoung looks faintly murderous, and just a little bit amused. "Like yesterday, when I almost ended up with soap in my mouth—"

Because he'd been too busy trying to eat her out in the shower, he doesn't say. Soonyoung cocks an eyebrow at him, admirably keeping her cool in the face of all the cameras pointed in their direction, but the slight hint of red forming on the tips of her ears is enough to make Wonwoo feel smug, like he's just won an argument.

At least, until Soonyoung kicks at his knee from under the dining table. "Keep it up and I'll make sure you never get a chance to get a face full of _anything_ ever again," says Soonyoung.

Wonwoo shovels a strawberry into his mouth. "I feel like I'm getting threatened on-cam," he says, looking at the nearest camera. "Are you recording all of this?"

"Stop appealing to the public with your pretty face," Soonyoung complains. "I'm at a disadvantage here!"

"You're wearing the shortest shorts known to man," says Wonwoo, eyeing her house clothes. "I think _I'm_ the one who's gonna have to fend off the fanboys."

"Who's the one who's been walking around shirtless after taking a shower again?"

"I'm only doing it for the ratings," says Wonwoo. "Besides, the kids walk around naked all the time!"

"How old are you again?"

"Old enough to do this," says Wonwoo, just as he leans across the table to give her a peck on the mouth. It's obnoxious and loud enough that it has the kids looking up and away from their morning cartoons long enough to make faces and screech about how gross they both are, like the drama kings they are. Wonwoo angles his face enough to deepen the kiss, just to annoy them and hear the stutter in Soonyoung's breath all the same.

Still, this _is_ a fairly PG show, and Soonyoung's shoving his face away soon enough, rolling her eyes even as the blush spreads to her cheeks. "Flattery will get you everywhere, Jeon Wonwoo."

It puts Wonwoo in a strangely good mood for the rest of the hour, enough that he doesn't even feel any exasperation when he has to take Pompom out on a walk with the kids in tow. Mostly, at least. He spends a good ten minutes trying to explain to Bongki and Bongsun why putting Hoshi on a leash and taking him out on a walk with them would be a _terrible_ idea, but the genuine confusion slowly melts into one of amusement as he watches them corral the cat into a bright pink leash and tempt him down the stairs with treats in their tiny, fisted palms. They never make it past a foot away from their front door, though, not with the way Hoshi keeps making plaintive noises at Soonyoung, so much so that Soonyoung has to rescue her disgruntled cat away from her own flesh and blood.

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks," Soonyoung argues, waving away the identical pair of pouting faces looking up at her and taking Hoshi into her arms. "Let's not stress him out too much, okay?"

"But Hoshi's a cat," Bongki points out.

"He's right, you know," says Wonwoo.

Soonyoung throws him a long-suffering look, and shuts the door in their faces without kissing him goodbye.

"Can't believe she picks the cat over me," Wonwoo mutters, under his breath. The blatant favoritism is just _too much_.

"Girls are so weird," says Bongsun, sagely, and blows a raspberry at Pompom's bright-eyed face, eyes fixated on Bongsun's. Wonwoo would agree with him more, but the only girls Bongsun even knows barring family and Jihoon's kids are the part-time workers at the nearby daycare that keep fawning over him and Bongki even before they found out who their father was. To this day, Soonyoung still blames the tooth decay of the past year over the sweets and lollipops they keep sneaking the kids. That one, though— Wonwoo's blaming it all on Junhui trying to bribe her way into their hearts with cake instead.

"Not this one, though," says Wonwoo, scratching the space between Pompom's ears. Pompom butts her head up against his hand, tongue lolling out as she pants, like she's been running for half an hour instead of being carted around Wonwoo's arms the entire time, defeating the purpose of being walked. It's fine, Wonwoo reasons. He'll let her go when they get to the park, as long as there aren't any hulking dogs around.

All men are wolves, no matter how cute they look at first. Wonwoo should know. He's a guy, after all.

 

 

They end up going to the Han River with a few of the crew members, mostly because Soonyoung texts Wonwoo that she's meeting up with her brother Youngwon at a family restaurant nearby and Wonwoo doesn't want to deal with coming home to an empty apartment and Bongki having war flashbacks of being separated from his mother for the longest period of time to date. He can't deal with the impending waterworks all over again. _Can't_.

A part of Wonwoo worries if maybe they'll have to talk to a therapist about it, and then he remembers the disastrous first time Soonyoung dropped the kids off at pre-school and actively tries not to think about it instead. He's already dreading sending them to elementary school full-time, even if Soonyoung thinks he's over-reacting.

Yeah, well, Soonyoung didn't have to deal with Bongki crying, and _then_ Bongsun joining in on the madness, even with Mingyu around. They didn't use to be this prone to tears when they were babies, so quiet and meek sometimes Soonyoung joked that they could almost pass as dolls instead of living, breathing children. Wonwoo thinks he'd rather have a screaming, crying fit from an infant than a pre-schooler knowing full well how to throw a tantrum and milk the guilt for all its worth.

Maybe it's his fault, he thinks, just as a heavy stone settles into the pit of his stomach, lurching. Maybe he's doing this whole parenting thing wrong.

"Or maybe that's just your lactose intolerance talking," is all Soonyoung has to offer, when he calls her before he could spiral into the road of doubt and self-deprecation further. "Did you buy ice cream to keep the kids quiet again?"

"No," says Wonwoo, after a beat. "What do you take me for?" Technically, sorbets don't have milk in them, but he's not going to argue with Soonyoung on that front. He knows a losing battle when he sees it.

"I love you, but you kinda suck at lying, Wonwoo," says Soonyoung, as if she's any better at it. Out of all of them, it's Soonyoung that can't lie to save her life, blanking out in the middle of trying to work out a story that's plausible enough to suspend disbelief. This is why none of their children believe in the tooth fairy or Santa.

"You do realize you're basically questioning my professional qualifications, don't you?"

"It's the face," Soonyoung teases him. "You've got all the teenage girls fooled."

"Weren't you supposed to be terrorizing your brother over lunch instead of me?"

Soonyoung laughs, and blows a kiss at him right before he hangs up. It doesn't take more than half a minute for him to regret cutting off the call abruptly, already missing her voice. He looks at Bongsun rolling around the grass on the riverbank with Pompom, and at Bongki making cow eyes at the staff noonas for a bite of their sorbets after turning his nose up at the flavor Wonwoo got him, picky and completely impervious to his internal conflict. Then he looks down at his phone, Soonyoung's duck face as his wallpaper, equally indifferent.

He sighs.

One of the camerawomen filming him titters, and he shakes his head at the camera. "When you get married, you'll understand," he says.

"It's cute," she reassures him, adjusting the camera on her shoulder. "It's like you're still in the honeymoon period or something."

Or something. Last Wonwoo checked, the honeymoon period entailed a lot of PDA and sweet nothings, not being left alone to single-handedly babysit two hyperactive children and a dog. He makes a face, and she laughs.

"Don't be fooled by his looks, Siyeon-sshi," Chan, one of the other crew members, comments on the side. "Soonyoung-noona says he's practically a kid inside." He hands Siyeon a bottle of water and gives Wonwoo a shit-eating grin. "You're a lot more childish than you look, Wonwoo-sshi."

He's worked with Chan before, back when Chan was still an intern, but he can't exactly say they're on friendlier terms than co-workers, enough to merit the familiarity. It's Soonyoung that's closer to him — she'd been the one to tell him of the connection, at first, when he'd been trying to piece together where he'd seen Chan at some point — and it's something he'd felt a vague pang of irritation at when she'd cooed at how handsome he'd gotten since she'd last seen him; that he'd looked at her with exasperated fondness hasn't helped in the slightest, even if Chan _does_ help him herd the pets away from dislodging the cameras, or bends down when he talks to the kids to meet their eye level, foregoing the baby talk for level-headedness. "He's all grown up now," Soonyoung had said, beaming, and Wonwoo had tried not to grimace at that.

Still, a job's a job, and he has an image to maintain. He lets the frown on his face smoothen out into something less telling of his mood. "Considering I keep actively trying to murder Kim Mingyu on film, that's not too difficult to accomplish," says Wonwoo, dryly.

Chan lets out a short, sharp bark of laughter. "It's an unexpected side," he says, crinkly-eyed and boyish, the kind of face Soonyoung likes. "The viewers will love it."

"I hope so too," says Wonwoo, with a polite smile, and goes back to the fray to rescue the other staff from Bongki's puppy dog eyes.

Funny how the smallest of things can completely turn the mood over. He tries not to think too deeply about what else Soonyoung must have said to Chan, out of earshot, but feels that familiar flutter of something dark creeping low in his belly when Chan gives Bongki a freshly-bought strawberry ice pop. Tries, but can't.

It's an exercise in futility.

 

 

Filming for the day ends right after their excursion, the crew meticulously packing up the cameras installed all over the house. They'll be back to film for the Chuseok special — an early celebration of it, at least, if they want to get editing done in time for the episode to actually air on the holiday itself — and it's with a sigh of relief that Wonwoo can finally collect his thoughts with a little more privacy.

Or, at least, as much privacy as one could get with two kids arguing over which cartoon to watch in the living room. He settles for curling up in bed with the cat at his feet and a paperback he'd bought from the airport bookstore a few weeks ago, one he'd ended up abandoning in favor of succumbing to exhaustion and sleep around nine pages in. If nothing else, at least it had been an effective enough cover for his face that when the flight had landed and he'd peeled it off of his face, one of the passengers had almost tripped on their own luggage in their surprise.

There are days when he feels like a stranger in his own home, and it's been happening more often than not in the past year, even beyond the inscrutability of his own children. There are knickknacks in the hallway that he doesn't remember seeing or buying, and he doesn't know where some of their groceries are stocked unless one of the kids (or, god forbid, the staff) points it out. Heck, he doesn't even know half the things Bongki or Bongsun have grown to like or dislike, their preferences ever-changing at a pace that makes him feel like he can't keep up.

It's hard.

He's at least a third through the novel by the time Soonyoung ambushes him, letting her weight fall entirely on Wonwoo. Hoshi barely lifts his head at the disturbance, but flicks his tail back and forth, the way he does when he's annoyed. He's easily appeased by Soonyoung's outstretched toes rubbing at his side, just above his belly, and his purring reverberates, enough that Wonwoo can feel the shaking at the soles of his feet.

"Move," Soonyoung whines, bumping the top of her head against Wonwoo's chin like a lazy cat. Wonwoo just grunts and lets Soonyoung burrow into his side; he can feel the satisfied smile stretching across her lips as she noses up at his jaw, pressing a tiny kiss at the base of his ear; years of practice, and yet it still makes him shiver, sensitized.

"I know what you're trying to do," says Wonwoo, without lifting his eyes from his book.

"Oh?" She hums against his neck, fingers rubbing circles at his hip. "What do you think I'm doing?"

"Being distracting," says Wonwoo. His eyes skim over a line, one he's probably read at least three times in the entire time she'd holed up against him. "Stop it."

"Is it working?"

He sighs. "I wish it didn't."

"You've been staring at the same page the whole time," she points out. "What are you even reading?"

He folds the book shut, and shows her the cover.

" _Please look after mom_ ," She reads aloud, eyebrows raised. "Sounds depressing."

"A bit of light reading never hurt anyone." He turns a page without registering anything he's reading. "You're home early."

"Had to get away from my brother nagging me for hours by buying ice cream cake and pretending it was melting," she says, dryly. "I swear, it's like he's trying to channel mom whenever we meet up." She rolls her eyes, but there's no heat in her tone. "Youngwon says hi, by the way."

Wonwoo makes a vague noise under his breath. He's sure Soonyoung's brother also had a _lot_ to say about him, and not all of them niceties. He's been on the receiving end of one too many raised eyebrows, shovel talks and attempts at cockblocking to feign complete ignorance, but by mutual agreement, he and Youngwon have learned to _tolerate_ each other over the years. It's one of the reasons they don't really cross paths much without a buffer if they can help it.

Then again, Youngwon was a lot less of a thorn on his side when he was in university mooching rent off of Soonyoung and Wonwoo still wasn't dating his sister. A lot's changed since then.

"Did he bug you about going home for the holidays again?"

"Something like that." She digs her fingers into the dip of his waist, squeezing. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah." He turns another page. "Why?"

"You haven't looked at me since I started annoying you."

"I'm reading."

"No, you're not. You're doing that thing where you're pretending you're busy doing something but you're actually wallowing all by yourself." She huffs. "If there's one thing I'm sure Bongki gets from you, it's the sulking."

"I don’t know what you're talking about."

The nails digging into his skin are sharp, poised to pinch at his muscles. "Don't make me get Hoshi to sit on your face."

"Don't bring the cat into this."

"Watch me."

Wonwoo heaves a sigh, and sets his book aside to look her straight in the eye. "It's stupid."

Soonyoung meets his gaze head-on. "Babe, I listen to your children throw each other under a bus every day and deal with spoiled celebrities in my spare time. I'm used to stupidity."

"I'm the only celebrity you've ever managed."

"My point exactly."

Wonwoo can't bring it in himself to crack a smile at that; the thing about him and Soonyoung is that it's easier to fall into banter when they're trying to lighten the atmosphere, but right now it just feels like his earlier optimism's disappeared in the span of a few hours, planted by the smallest seed of doubt.

It's not Soonyoung's fault, though, he thinks, as he watches her grin falter— but even the realization of it rankles in some deep, instinctive part of his gut, a twinge he'd thought he'd forgotten a long time ago. Maybe she's wrong about him finally learning how to share. Maybe he's just regressing these days.

"It's none of your business, Soonyoung. Just let it go," he says, pushing himself out of the cocoon of warmth under the guise of looking for his phone. If Soonyoung looks the slightest bit hurt, he tries not to look like he notices.

 _Thank god the cameras are turned off_ , shouldn't be the first thing that crosses his mind, but it's there at the back of his head, lingering, like a ghost.

 

 

The first mistake is him figuring it will pass.

That's how he usually deals with the small problems, anyway, letting them ebb and flow with the tides of life and watching them take their due course. An off day at work because of a newbie mixing up the schedules and scripts, a sudden influx of hate comments and overly critical messages from netizens watching his every move like vultures, being late for back-to-back appointments because of a construction-induced traffic jam, flight delays and cancellations right before the twins' birthday— he's used to things not going his way, by some quirk of fate or coincidence. There's very little that other people can do or say that would rankle under his skin as much as they had when he was in his twenties and just starting out.

Internalizing the repercussions, though— that's the demon lurking, always, in the back of his mind. The critics say he's better off with the gritty roles— the brooding anti-heroes or the unreadable antagonists with a grandiose sense of self-worth and a hundred issues on their plate— but it's not something Wonwoo's proud of, sometimes, when it makes him look colder to the touch and unknowable to the people he loves best, the ones he wants to be an open book to instead of an open-ended scene ending on a cliff-hanger.

Lately, though, he feels like he's stuck. It's a series of small things, accumulated over time. It starts with the awkwardness between him and Soonyoung, the aftermath of an unresolved not-fight that has Wonwoo second-guessing himself every time he wants to touch her, to melt into her like nothing's happened to rock the boat. A braver man would have, though; he can't bring himself to, and she doesn't reach out or initiate anything beyond a cursory peck goodbye when they're off to work.

The tension between them seems to transfer over to Bongki and Bongsun, and for once they don't make it a point to be the annoying bed crawlers they are and stick firmly to their own room, backs turned to each other the whole time. They keep getting into arguments with each other lately, ones that start of as hushed whispers in the corner that escalate into hair pulling, screaming tantrums and near-inconsolable tears, so much so that there's a semi-permanent border of stuffed toys and wooden blocks in the middle of their room to keep their sides as separate as possible by mutual agreement. They fight, and they fight, and they fight, and it's a long, protracted battle that's testing both his and Soonyoung's tempers, bleeding fatigue and frustration together into an unidentifiable ball.

By the time they head off to film the joint playdate with Jihoon's kids, Wonwoo's close to giving up. Bongki's in a sour mood as ever, face completely blank the entire time they're there, partly because Bongsun's hell-bent on ignoring him and keeps trying to draw Ming Ming and Junjie's attentions to himself, and partly because Junhui opts out of going to the spa to try to get into the twins' good graces by letting them have cake for dessert and playing house with them. Either out of genuine curiosity or spite for his brother, Bongsun lets himself be swayed, for once, by Junhui's bright eyes and the pleased curve of her lip; Bongki, still sulking, just curls up in Soonyoung's arms and refuses to come closer to the rest of them, not even when Jihoon and Wonwoo start setting up an inflatable pool in the middle of the living room.

"Swimming? In autumn?" Soonyoung calls out from her spot inside the dining room, just a few feet away. She's hanging back from the rest of the group, perched on one of the chairs and stroking the back of Bongki's head all the while, lulling him to sleep to stave off another tantrum. "Really, Jihoon?"

"Weren't you supposed to go to the spa today?" Jihoon shoots back, eyebrow raised. If it weren't his own home, he'd probably aim the hose at Soonyoung just to watch her splutter and shriek. Wonwoo's not putting it past Jihoon to do it, especially not when he's known Soonyoung for much longer than even Wonwoo does.

"That doesn't count," Soonyoung insists. "Skin care's on a completely different level."

"You say this like you weren't the one who kept refusing to leave the pool even in the middle of a storm when we were younger."

"Watch it, you punk," she warns. "I have more blackmail fodder against you."

"I'm terrified," Jihoon deadpans, but focuses back on the task at hand when Ming Ming starts whining at him about adding a bath bomb to the makeshift pool.

Wonwoo tries to meet Junhui's eyes, but Junhui's too busy getting Junjie into a tiny swim vest with cutesy frog patterns all over—a gift from Minghao, no doubt. A long time ago, they'd both commiserated over the vagueness of Jihoon and Soonyoung's relationship, their familiarity a double-edged sword. It's useless now to feel as strongly about it, but—

Well. Wonwoo's mind has never been one for the path of least resistance. It doesn't help that Chan's hovering off to the side and offering to take Bongki out of Soonyoung's hands, what with how Bongki's practically sprawled across Soonyoung's lap and teetering closer to the floor by now. Huh.

As if sensing his mood, Bongsun wades over to his side of the inflatable pool, flicking water at Wonwoo's cheek and shirt in the process like a dog. "Daddy," he says, blinking up at him with wary eyes, "why do you look like you just ate something from the ocean?"

Wonwoo furrows his brows together, tearing his gaze away from Soonyoung and Chan talking in hushed whispers inside. "You mean fish?"

"Yeah, that," says Bongsun, dismissively. He plops down on the mat and tries to make a tiny, makeshift water fountain with his hands, watching the water spurt up in between his joined palms. "Mommy says it's good for you and you shouldn't be picky about your food, you know."

"Mommy has a lot of opinions about things," he mutters under his breath.

"I know," says Bongsun, already bored. "Where do you think Bongki gets it from?"

 

 

By the time the kids have been tired out enough to be coaxed into an afternoon nap and the living room cleaned and mopped up, Junhui has to leave for another shoot. She presses a quick kiss to each of the kids' foreheads, lingering on Bongki a little longer— "Who knows when I'll ever get the chance to do it again," she says, half-joking, half-not. It's a little sad to watch, when Junhui loves kids as much as she loves tiny animals she practically goes soft at the sight of them, but alas. Whatever god exists up there must have really been fair when they'd made Wen Junhui.

"I have to admit," says Jihoon, "today had a lot less screaming and crying than I was anticipating at first."

"Don't be too sure of yourself," says Wonwoo. "We still have a few minutes before they wake up."

"God, don't remind me." Jihoon grimaces. "Ming Ming's the most difficult person to deal with after a nap."

"You should try waking my kids up," says Wonwoo. "It's been worse since they practically declared war against each other this week."

"Huh. No wonder they were ignoring each other. And here I thought Jun had finally gotten through one of their thick skulls with cake."

"You can't solve everything with food, Jihoon."

"You and Soonyoung can't cook for shit, of course you'd think that way," Jihoon points out. He narrows his eyes at Soonyoung, who's still deep in conversation with the crew— and, of course, her favorite not-intern. "Speaking of Soonyoung— are you guys okay?"

"Why wouldn't we be?"

"I don't know, maybe because you two have barely said anything to each other since stepping foot here and it's making _me_ really uncomfortable having to be the buffer in whatever stupid fight you two are having," says Jihoon, not bothering to mince his words. "I'm so glad I didn't go to school with both of you at the same time. I would have ruptured a blood vessel dealing with you two."

"We're working on it, mom," Wonwoo groans.

"Good, because I've already had to deal with one too many lovesick puppies looking at her like _that_ back in my time," he scoffs, the way he always does when he talks about _anyone_ feeling the remotest sense of attraction to Soonyoung; if Wonwoo hadn't met Youngwon, he would have thought _Jihoon_ was her long-suffering younger brother.

He takes a sip of water, wetting his lips, and his eyes dart back to Soonyoung. "At least one of them's mostly gotten over the schoolboy crush by now."

"You don't have to keep making fun of me," says Wonwoo. "I married her, didn't I?"

"Not everything's about _you_ , Wonwoo," says Jihoon, rolling his eyes. "As much as we'd both like to think the universe revolves around your questionable life choices when it comes to Soonyoung, I was actually talking about Chan."

" _Chan_?"

"Yeah, he had the biggest crush on her before she graduated. The asshats from the dance org kept trying to set them up on group dates, but Soonyoung dropped out of the team after she fucked her knee up, and— well—" Jihoon makes a face. "Let's just say the meet-cute at the agency when he'd started interning was vomit-inducing enough to make everyone at work excited."

"This is the first time I'm hearing this," says Wonwoo, flatly.

"Of course it is," says Jihoon, breezily, as if he hasn't single-handedly caused the depressing plummeting of Wonwoo's mood. "You've been the biggest cockblocker to her dates since you met her."

Wonwoo doesn't know what kind of face he's making, but it must be _something_. It's enough to make Jihoon burst into laughter, loud and booming. "Don't even try to deny it, Jeon Wonwoo."

"I'm trying to wrap my brain around one of the PDs nursing a crush on my wife," says Wonwoo. "Give me a bit of time to process this information."

"Relax, it's not like anything's gonna happen. I'm sure Chan's over it by now," says Jihoon. He steeples his fingers together, resting his chin on his hands. "He's not the type of guy to make a move on someone taken, much less one with _kids_ , and Soonyoung's not the kind of person to fool around, either."

"She literally drools over Junhui in front of you."

Jihoon closes his eyes, looking pained. "We promised to never talk about that."

"Talk about what?" Soonyoung cuts in, sneaking up on them like the nosy gossip she is. Her eyebrows are knitted together in caution, like she's trying to make out what kind of lies and slander have come out of Jihoon's mouth in the entirety of their conversation.

The back of her hand brushes against Wonwoo's wrist, and Wonwoo can feel the sharp jut of bone, the crests of her knuckles against his skin too keenly. He wants to hold her hand, tightly, to latch onto her and brandish the rings on their fingers for everyone to see, but he's frozen.

She jerks her hand away, keeping it behind her back. Her face betrays nothing, but he can see her fingers twitch, restless and uneasy. He can feel his heart catch in his throat.

"Nothing," says Jihoon, loftily. "Just talking about how it's funny how fate works out, sometimes. Right, Wonwoo?"

"Right," Wonwoo echoes, curling his fingers into a fist. "Funny, that."

The want in his stomach burns.

 

 

The second mistake is thinking Soonyoung won't be stubborn enough to not let it go.

The drive back is quiet, the kids asleep in the backseat and Soonyoung hyper-focused on texting someone on her phone. On a regular day, he doesn't mind the silence—prefers it, even, over the sound of Bongki and Bongsun squabbling over some insignificant thing that feels like everything and nothing in their age, but Soonyoung keeps smiling and angling her phone away from Wonwoo's line of vision, like she's actively trying to be subtle and failing.

Discretion's not a prominent trait for Soonyoung, who's given out so many spoilers on SNS that the agency had permanently banned her from manning Wonwoo's (mostly inactive) accounts. He knows Soonyoung's hiding something from him, and he knows she's trying to rile him up. He _knows_ he shouldn't take the bait.

Unfortunately, with age comes less resistance, and he can't help but ask, just as they stop at a red light. "Who are you talking to?"

"No one," she says, not missing a beat. Her face is perfectly blank, a thin veneer of boredom, but it eventually cracks and turns into a small grin.

"That doesn't look like it's no one," he says, the words coming out whinier than he intends.

"Who would I even be talking to?"

"I don't know," he mutters. The light flashes green, and he puts his foot on the pedal with more force than it really needs. "Why do you always have to answer a question with another question?"

"Why do you keep asking things that don't need to be asked?"

He can already feel a migraine forming in his head. "Soonyoung, just tell me who it is already."

"Why are you acting like a creepy and possessive boyfriend?" Soonyoung scowls, tucking her phone close to her chest. Her voice takes on a stroppy tone, challenging, almost. "I don't have to tell you everything, right? I mean, it's none of your business what I do."

"Fine," says Wonwoo, slowing to a stop as they reach another intersection. The flashing red light up front hurts his eyes. "Be that way."

Soonyoung doesn't say anything for a while, keeping her eyes peeled on her phone. By the time they reach the parking lot of their apartment and pulled over into their space, she finally opens her mouth, just before he takes his seatbelt off and unlocks the doors. When she speaks, her voice has lost the heat in it, but kept all of the strain, the stiffness. With a calculated, steady voice, she asks, "Do you really want to know?"

No. Yes. He doesn't know. Soonyoung answers for him, though, fiddling with her phone. "It was Chan. I was texting Chan."

The migraine in Wonwoo's head pounds harder, now. It's making him feel light-headed, like he can't focus. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

"What?" She says, defensively. "We're friends!"

"Friends don't _flirt_ with each other, Soonyoung."

"Oh, so you think we're flirting now? Is _that_ what your problem is?"

"You keep talking to him off-cam all the time!"

"I haven't seen him in _years_ , Wonwoo, of _course_ I'd want to catch up with him, give me a fucking break—"

"A guy wouldn't give his number to someone he wasn't interested in and text them every minute—"

"Fuck you, if I had a hundred won for every time some actress texted you, I could single-handedly send the kids to college by now—"

"Show me your phone, then," Wonwoo challenges, tightening his grip on the wheel.

Soonyoung stays very, very still. "What?"

Bongsun's head lolls around in the backseat, knocking against Bongki's. They don't wake up though, not from the force of it, nor from the tension in the car, the increasing pitch of Wonwoo or Soonyoung's voices. Wonwoo's jealous of how they can be so unsuspecting of everything, how they're unbridled of the things that make Wonwoo's chest squeeze so tightly it feels like he can't breathe. He wishes they don't have to know how it feels.

The last time he and Soonyoung had a falling out, they'd ended up breaking up; they're both so stubborn, so obstinate that they don't want to give in when they feel they're in the right, even if they _know_ they should. Years later, and still Wonwoo can't say with certainty they'd outgrown that misplaced sense of competition. They always, always want the last word.

It's the only thing that makes him do something stupid, in retrospect. In that moment, though, it feels like it's the only thing that matters.

"Your phone," he insists, and even if the words feel like acid on his tongue, as discomfiting as the bile rising in his throat, a twisted, more spiteful part of him feels a bit of satisfaction at the way she looks so shocked, like she isn't expecting it at all. "Show me."

It's threatening to fall apart at the crestfallen look on her face. "Don't you trust me anymore, Wonwoo-yah?"

Wordlessly, he holds a palm out to her. She looks at his hand, and then at his face, like she can't read him. Like she doesn't know him anymore.

He flips her phone over, unlocking the screen. The only thing that greets him is a thread full of cat gifs, all from Junhui.

"I lied," says Soonyoung, flatly. Always, always the last word. "I was talking to Jun."

 

 

Wonwoo carries the kids to bed by himself. Soonyoung hefts Bongsun up in her arms from the parking lot to the front door, but she heads straight to their bedroom the minute Bongsun manages to wake up enough to toddle on his feet by himself, latching onto the back of Wonwoo's coat for support. In his arms, Bongki's still dead to the world, unmoving. Wonwoo doesn't have the heart to wake him up.

He helps Bongsun brush his teeth and change into his pajamas, and tries to change Bongki's clothes to something more comfortable. Bongki's shoes, he tugs off and sets down by the foot of his bed. He'll deal with it tomorrow morning when he wakes up.

Bongsun's out like a light again by the time Wonwoo finishes up with Bongki, and he smoothens the hair out of their foreheads and presses a soft kiss to their cheeks. Then he makes his way back out to feed Pompom and Hoshi, scratching the back of their heads the whole time they eat.

Soonyoung's curled up in bed with her back turned away from the door, when he makes his way to their room, a solid lump under the comforter bundled up over her chin. He hovers by the doorframe, not saying anything for a while. Like he's waiting for an invitation that's slow to come.

"What are you standing there for like an idiot?" She says, voice sounding wet, like she's been crying. "I'm cold."

It's as good as any invitation he's going to get. His feet pad against the floor heated up by the thermostat and inches over to the empty side of the bed, sinking into the space with a sigh. He doesn't bother to crawl under the covers, leeching off her warmth. He's not sure she'd let him.

Gingerly, he lets an arm rest over where he thinks her shoulders might be, and squeezes. She stiffens, for a moment, only to sag against his weight with a sniffle.

"Jihoon told me something interesting today," says Soonyoung, quietly. "He said you were being weirder than usual today, and it's all because of Chan."

Wonwoo doesn't say anything yet. He doesn't trust himself to.

"You know you have nothing to be jealous of, don't you?" Soonyoung goes on, keeping her tone light. Steady. Like she's less bothered by it than Wonwoo knows she actually is. "He's a huge dork. Practically a baby."

"He's near his thirties," says Wonwoo. "I don't think that's anywhere near infancy."

Soonyoung laughs, and it sounds wobbly, brittle. "All this time I've been fangirling after Jun and Mingyu, and yet it's _Chan_ you're worried about?"

"I'm not worried," Wonwoo lies, letting his forehead rest against the back of her head. "It's nothing, okay? Just a stupid thing." He purses his lips, and tries to make his voice sound less like he actually feels: like he's about to fall apart. "And we've talked about you perving on Jun. It's making Jihoon very uncomfortable."

"Jihoon's practically immune by now," says Soonyoung. "I've been waxing poetic about Jun since she debuted."

"He's really, really not."

"So you'll let me perv on Mingyu, but not on Jun? Talk about a double-standard."

"If it makes Mingyu uncomfortable, I say go for it."

"It's no fun if Minghao doesn't even react, though," says Soonyoung. She takes a deep, shaky breath. "And don't think you've distracted me from what we were talking about, Mister. I can hear the cogs working in your head."

"Look, it's just—" He rubs a palm over his face, stifling a sigh behind his hand. "You know how it took us a while before we started dating, and how it took even longer for us to start being friends?" She makes a vague noise of affirmation, and he goes on, feeling a weight lodged in his throat, thick and discomfiting. "Sometimes I think about all the people you met back then, and how you could have been something with them instead of me. And then I start feeling like I missed out on so many things about you that I could have had if we weren't so slow about everything."

"That's not fair," says Soonyoung. "You've dated other people before. You can't pin this on me."

"I _know_ ," says Wonwoo. "I told you, it's stupid."

And it is, isn't it? But that's the thing about jealousy, about letting things fester— they pile up, bit by bit, until something in the structure cracks, and then it topples over. A gust of wind, a careless touch, and that's all it takes for it to spill over, a jumbled mess.

He'd been jealous of other people before. He'll probably still feel the vaguest sense of jealousy in the future, even. He thinks of Jisoo, and then of Minghao. Jihoon. Chan. All of the names and faces that get lost in the sea of time and memories, all the ones he'd never met and probably never will. He thinks of all the people Soonyoung could have hit it off with, all the possibilities, and it makes the knot in his stomach tighten. It's irrational, but he can't help it.

Soonyoung rolls over to her side, facing him. She looks at him with wide eyes, like she's trying to make out his face in the darkness, a blind man feeling for something for the first time. When she fails, she touches his cheek with tentative fingers. The slope of his nose. The curve of his jaw. His chin. The cupid's bow of his lips. His mouth. His brow.

"I married you, though," says Soonyoung, softly. "Isn't that enough?"

 

 

"See, here's what I don't get," says Jisoo, Junhui's manager, while they're waiting in the greenroom for the pre-interviews at a talk show to start. "You've been complaining about not being as involved in your family as you could be for the past few years, but now that you're with them for longer periods, it's like you're actively doing everything in your power to keep them at an arm's length when the bad parts start cropping up."

"Use smaller words," says Wonwoo, nursing a headache after an impromptu round of drinks when Mingyu had gotten whiff of his horrible mood when he'd come in for work. "I'm not capable of complex speech right now."

"All I'm saying is, are you sure this isn't some kind of self-destructive defense mechanism?"

"Smaller."

"He's telling you you're a dick," Minghao cuts in, blunt and ruthless as ever. Wonwoo lobs a throw pillow at him and misses, hitting Mingyu square in the chest instead.

"Thanks for the input, asshole."

"Leave him alone, Hao Hao," says Junhui, flipping through a magazine as Minghao fixes her braid with a bottle of hairspray and a fine-toothed comb. "His pride's just been hurt and now he's wallowing in self-pity."

"And drunk on an empty stomach at ten in the morning," says Mingyu.

Wonwoo shoots him a look of utter betrayal. "You were the one who bought the soju from the convenience store!"

"You didn't _have_ to drink a third of the bottle, hyung."

"Yeah, no one needs a repeat of your DUI scandal," says Minghao, delicately. Wonwoo makes a gutted, affronted noise and buries his head back under the mountain of pillows on the leather couch. "Oh, were we not supposed to mention that yet? It's been more than half a decade. Grow up."

The acid in Wonwoo's stomach keeps broiling and simmering, but it bubbles up again now that Minghao's reminded him of _that_ dark episode in his past when he'd let his stupidity reign over his rational side. He remembers disappointing a lot of people, in that time. His parents. His agency. His friends. Soonyoung. It's a part of his life that feels like a delayed rebellious phase, only with the convenient excuse of a break-up and a series of bad decisions leading up to his name on the headlines of Dispatch in record time.

He doesn't want a repeat of it, but today doesn't look too promising a start for him at all. From the twitch of Junhui's eyebrow, he's not the only one who thinks the same thing too.

"We'll cover for you if you feel like projectile vomiting later, but _please_ don't throw up on my dress," says Junhui.

"I'd kill you if you do," says Minghao.

"It's a good thing you don't talk much to begin with, hyung," Mingyu points out. "You can just nod and try not to channel your resting bitch face on set."

"You talk enough for three people," says Minghao. "No one's going to notice."

Wonwoo tunes out Minghao and Mingyu's thinly veiled flirting disguised as bickering, content to try to get a bit of napping done before the room gets crowded with the production staff. Jisoo sighs and gives up the inquisition to look for one of the writers, at least, so that's one less annoying person to deal with at the moment.

Too bad Junhui doesn't know when to quit.

"I think I know what you need," says Junhui.

"I swear to god, if you say couple's counselling, I will not hesitate to try to shoot you in the next episode."

"I was going to suggest a vacation and offer to babysit, but now that you mentioned it, I'm seriously considering rescinding the offer."

"We don't need counselling, Jun."

"Okay," says Junhui, fingers folded on her lap, "but have you ever considered that maybe _you_ do?"

Wonwoo closes his mouth, jaw clenched. Junhui gives him a tiny, sympathetic smile, one that makes Wonwoo feel small and out of his depth, like he's being lectured by his own mother all over again and he can't answer back. It sucks.

"It's not a bad thing to ask for help sometimes, Wonwoo," says Junhui. "You know that, right?"

 

 

Wonwoo thinks about it. He really does. He thinks about it the entirety of filming, barely listening to the conversation and smiling and nodding at appropriate times when the rest of his cast mates do. When one of the hosts call him out on being distracted, Junhui's there to live up to her earlier promise, teasing him about having too much on his mind ever since filming for Return of Superman started. "And you know how crazy he is about his wife," says Junhui, smile sticky-sweet even as she digs her elbow at his side painfully, "but not as much as _I'm_ crazy about my _adorable_ family— here, let me show you pictures—"

He thinks about it on the drive home instead of reading the script for next week's table read like he's supposed to. Jisoo's offered to drive him back, at least, and Junhui probably would have corralled him into an Uber either way with how distracted he is. "Let's not make a widow out of anyone just yet," Jisoo jokes, nervously, and even that doesn't rankle at Wonwoo's nerves like it normally would. Everything feels like there's a thin layer of cotton padding his skin from the outside world, like he's living in a bubble, detached from everything and everyone.

When they pass by a drive-thru, it's Jisoo that has to rattle off his usual order when Wonwoo remains quiet, unresponsive the whole time. The road home is a blur, the elevator ride up to his floor even hazier; the sound of Pompom barking behind the front door is muted, like there's something blocking his ears. The weight of Bongki and Bongsun's bodies slamming against his knee caps and enfolding him into a hug— they're real, though, he thinks, running his fingers through their scalp. They're here.

It's all he can think about, over and over again, so much that he's almost bursting. And when Soonyoung comes to meet him at the hallway, hands folded over her chest and offering him a small, tired smile, Wonwoo knows he has to say it now, before he loses the courage. Before he can't get the words out and it's too late.

"Soonyoung-ah," he says, mouth dry, parched. "We need to talk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry christmas in advance!!!! now that we got the cute parts out of the way, it's time to go into the less fluffy bits UvU (nervous laughter) happy holidays, amirite?
> 
> I wrote this in a disjointed, cough-and-cold-induced rush, so I may or may not be going back and forth to edit this and earlier parts. Oh well. Here's to hoping the next part will _actually_ be the end...


	4. Chapter 4

Bongki's kicking at his seat, restless since they'd left the apartment at dawn without Soonyoung in tow. Even with a Happy Meal from the drive-thru they’d stopped at before hitting the highway, Bongki looks anything but pleased, brows knitted together and fussing at his beanie.

"Why isn't mommy with us?" He whines, peering out the window. "I thought we were all going together."

Bongsun stops fiddling with the tablet Wonwoo had handed him to keep him quiet, but so far Dinosaur Planet’s apparently not interesting enough to keep him from pursing his lips into a pout and chiming in. "Are you and mommy fighting again?" Bongsun asks. He sneaks a glance at Bongki, who refuses to look at any of them and just hunches his shoulders, like he's bracing himself for the worst.

Wonwoo's been dreading this talk since yesterday when Soonyoung had started packing the kids' clothes in their own tiny suitcases, right in the middle of the living room so they could just grab the bags and go. He’d tried not to look like he was paying too much attention as the twins left his side on the mat after being roused from their afternoon nap. With patience she’d had none of in her twenties, Soonyoung folded their underwear into tiny rolls, already second nature to her after years of living in hotel rooms and airports, all while the twins nagged at her to pack her own things and let them do it themselves.

(“We’re not kids anymore, mommy,” Bongsun whined, even as Bongki kept stubbornly trying to squirrel his way onto Soonyoung’s lap; he only managed to barely squeeze his head into the space between Soonyoung’s side and her arm, and he tucked his head against her knee like Hoshi was doing to Wonwoo right now. “We can take care of ourselves.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bongki muttered, and Soonyoung just laughed.

“I like doing things for you,” said Soonyoung, faking the hurt in her voice. “Do you not want mommy to do nice things for you anymore, Bongsun-ah?”

Bongsun sighed, flopping onto the opened suitcase with his arms crossed. “But you take forever to get ready!”

“That’s because I always end up taking care of daddy first,” said Soonyoung, with a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Wonwoo wanted to crawl closer to her and hold her close, tucking his face against her nape, but she’d just said she’d needed a bit of space and he didn’t have enough courage to say no.)

A ball of tension coils in Wonwoo's throat, tight and heavy, familiar now as he thinks of what to say. He swallows the lump in his throat, steeling himself as he tightens his hold on the steering wheel.

"No," Wonwoo lies. "Mommy just needed to visit your aunt for a bit. We'll see her again after we go to Changwon."

"Oh," says Bongsun, sounding crestfallen. “Is she coming with us to grandma and grandpa’s?”

“I don’t know,” says Wonwoo, jaw clenched. “We’ll see.”

Bongsun looks at Bongki, as if he’s looking for answers. When Bongki doesn't say anything, he asks, in a small, hushed voice. "Are you two getting a divorce?"

“What? No—“ Wonwoo looks at them from the rearview mirror sharply. “Why would you think that?”

“Hyuksu says his mom’s divorcing his dad,” Bongki pipes up, face perfectly blank. Probably a friend from pre-school, Wonwoo guesses, and the thought of it just makes Wonwoo’s stomach churn, and not just from the instant coffee this morning. “He’s moving to Busan next month.”

“Is that why we’re going to Changwon?” Bongsun warbles, looking near-tears already as he scrunches his face up. “I don’t wanna live away from mom!”

“No one is leaving,” says Wonwoo, patience fraying thin. “We’ll be back in a few days.”

“I don’t wanna go to Changwon anymore,” says Bongsun, ignoring him. Bongsun doesn’t get into as many temper tantrums as Bongki does, but he’s a lot more stubborn about it, tossing the tablet to the side and kicking at the back of Wonwoo’s seat in protest. “Go back! I wanna go home!”

“Me too,” Bongki pipes in, visibly upset.

“We’re already halfway there,” says Wonwoo, exasperated. “And weren’t you two excited about visiting grandma and grandpa?”

“Not without mom,” Bongsun wails, face red and splotchy now as he starts to tear up. Squirms in his seat, trying in vain to struggle out of the seatbelt. “I want mom!”

Wonwoo sighs, trying his best not to slam his head onto the dashboard and give into their demands. They’ll get sick of it eventually, he thinks. When he and Bohyuk had tantrums on the road, he vaguely remembers being left alone to tire themselves out until they were fast asleep in the car, whatever grievous slight they’d been deprived of forgotten soon enough. Wonwoo just has to wait and hope they’ll get distracted by new scenery and the bribe of toys and candy from doting grandparents before the next meltdown.

Bongki joins him in crying, and Wonwoo rubs at his forehead. Fuck. It’s gonna be a long drive ahead.

 

 

They arrive at Changwon, miraculously unscathed. Well, Bongsun accidentally scratched Bongki’s cheek in his flailing, and they’d had a mini-cat fight in the backseat that had Wonwoo pulling over and threatening to leave them stranded in the highway if they didn’t stop arguing, but that just set off the waterworks all over again and now Wonwoo is just ready to collapse in his old bedroom and never leave again.

His parents meet them at the gate, and his mother greets him with a sound kiss to his cheeks, just before she peeks into the backseat to fawn over the twins.

“Oh, my poor boys,” she coos, hefting Bongsun up and wiping his snot and tears away. “What happened?”

“Don’t ask, mom,” says Wonwoo, rolling his eyes. He walks over to the other side to try to coax Bongki out, but Bongki ignores him, scooting away and off to cling to Bongsun’s socked foot and his grandmother’s sweater instead.

“I’m sure they’re just hungry,” she says, waving his bad mood away; all her life, she’s believed the cure to anything is food, and it’s only Wonwoo’s pickiness and metabolism that’s made him stick thin all these years. She touches the back of Bongki’s head, leading him closer. “Have you eaten yet?”

“No,” Bongki hiccups, sniffling pitifully for good measure as if they hadn’t railed against Changwon and all of its evils not a few hours ago and sulkily snacked on packs of Koala’s March and Choco Pie without offering any to their poor, beleaguered driver. He leans his forehead against his grandmother’s hip, looking so sad and pathetic Wonwoo’s half-convinced he’s bound to follow his career path in the future. “Can we get ice cream, grandma?”

“After you eat some rice and soup,” she says, throwing Wonwoo a look of disapproval that has him sighing. “Now, let’s get you inside before you freeze to death. I don’t want anyone to get a cold right before the holiday—”

Chuseok. Right. Wonwoo looks around, grateful there aren’t any staff members in sight yet. They’re shooting the holiday special early so the editing team can work their magic and air on the day itself; he’ll have to coach his parents into following the script and pretending it’s already Chuseok when it clearly isn’t, but at least the show’s paying for part of the expenses they’ll incur in putting up the farce. He and Soonyoung haven’t talked about whether or not she’ll come down to Changwon for filming or even afterwards, and the message he’d typed in the parking lot that he couldn’t bear to send still sits in his inbox, waiting.

His hand twitches at his side, and he resists the urge to pull his phone out of his pocket and call her. Maybe separation anxiety is hereditary, after all.

“Rough drive?” His father asks, lightly, as Wonwoo bends to retrieve Bongsun’s fallen shoes to distract himself. The innocent question makes Wonwoo cringe, and he feels so small beside his father, just like a kid.

“The worst,” says Wonwoo, bluntly. “I’m seriously thinking about taking the train next time. Maybe being around strangers will get them to behave.”

“I watched the episode at the cat café. I don’t think being in public is going to be enough deterrent if they put their minds to it,” says his father, smiling crookedly. “I wonder where they got that hard headedness from.”

“I wonder,” says Wonwoo, drily, and lets himself be led out of the driveway and into his childhood home with a hand ruffling the top of his head.

 

Contrary to Wonwoo's expectations, the kids are perfectly well-behaved and polite around their grandparents. Even if they've spent the entire drive kicking and screaming in the backseat for their mom, they don't mention Soonyoung at all, not even when the film crew arrives a day later and follows them around on their small adventures around Wonwoo’s old neighborhood.

By the second day, they’ve mostly forgotten about their misery, eager to go out and explore with or without any adults in tow. They let their grandmother feed them more vegetables in exchange for extra pieces of chocolate, and they come with their grandfather to feed the birds in the park and ride bicycles with training wheels along the cherry blossom bridge out of season. They even take to squeezing into Wonwoo’s bed, as if the drive had never happened. Wonwoo sighs and strokes the thin wisps of their hair away from their eyes when they sleep, unsure if he should be grateful his kids apparently have the memory of a goldfish. They’re so easily distracted, it’s a blessing and a curse all at once.

On the fourth day, they go to Junam Reservoir to take pictures, the sanctuary fairly empty at this time of the year, just a few months short of the annual festival. Bongsun and Bongki are noisier than the buzzing insects and the chirping birds combined, chattering and pointing at every animal they come across and nearly giving their grandmother a heart attack when they try to chase a water deer near the main barrage. Wonwoo’s a little worried they might smuggle a wild animal home, but they’re more careful, less uninhibited around the cameras and their grandparents, and the rest of the trip to the wetlands goes by without much incident and more fanservice than Wonwoo’s ever seen from them without Soonyoung around.

Or maybe they’re just wary about unleashing the full extent of their delinquency in uncharted territory, Wonwoo thinks, but he keeps that thought to himself; he types and backspaces and retypes the message he tries to form for Soonyoung, The last thing he’d said to her was _We’re here_ , sent in between getting plied with a feast comparable to Chuseok or New Year’s the day they arrived, and all Soonyoung had sent back was _ok_ , absent of emoticons or a cutesy selca she would have sent on any other day. It’s like missing her when he’s out of town for work in a different timezone, except ten times worse now that he can’t bring himself to press her too much.

It could be worse, he reminds himself. There’d been a time before the twins had been born, before they’d even settled into an easy understanding that they couldn’t adjust to each other outside of work or friendship and into their new role as lovers, and they’d burnt each other out, made them push each other away. They’d broken up for—god, Wonwoo doesn’t even remember how long it was, just that she’d turned in her resignation and gone back to Namyangju for a while, and all Wonwoo had to show for it was a crushed heart, a DUI scandal, and the realization that maybe they had a bit of growing up to do some more. That maybe they’d rushed into things too quickly, even after the years he’d spent in love with her and wanting more.

It’s this that he thinks about for the next few days, and when his father takes the twins out to look for frogs after a rainy morning, his mother makes him sit down with her to peel oranges in her room, away from the cameras.

“You know, when you said you agreed to do the show, Bohyuk didn’t believe it at first,” she says, as she turns on the radio to mute their conversation from any nearby mics. “He said you’d fight tooth and nail to keep the kids out of the limelight so early.”

“Yeah, well, tuition’s getting more expensive,” he jokes, but he gets nothing but a raised eyebrow. “What?”

“You’ve had a college fund set aside for them the moment you found out Soonyoung was pregnant,” she says. He looks at the mandarin oranges in his hands, half-peeled with bits sticking under his nails. “I don’t think the money’s a factor in this situation.”

“A lot of things can happen by the time they even hit that age,” he says. “We could be expecting another baby.”

“If you were, I would have heard about it from the in-laws already.”

“True. I couldn’t even handle two of them. Three would make me go crazy.”

He puts peeled orange slices on the plate in front of them, and his mother opens one up to pop the seeds out before pressing it to his lips for him to eat. “They act differently around you, you know,” she says, and Wonwoo snorts.

“Yeah, they’re out to raise my blood pressure every chance they can get.”

“It’s not that they’re being difficult because they hate you,” she says, and he stiffens, fingers stopping his fruit peeling. “They just don’t know how to express themselves too well. You were like that too, you know, always sulking whenever your dad would come home late from work.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?” She muses. “You used to give your father a headache all the time. It was hard to watch you two struggle to get along.”

It’s so different now, though—he’d been so young, so unaware. His father had suffered so much from his selfishness, how he’d lashed out and said things he didn’t mean when all he wanted to say was, _I miss you. Play with me more. You’re never around. Come home soon. I’ll be good next time, I promise_. He didn’t understand what it was, to put food on the table and do adult things. He just wanted time and attention, that was all.

He’d never thought he’d have kids at this age, though. His early forties, maybe, or never at all. Maybe he would have adopted instead. Bongki and Bongsun were happy accidents they hadn’t planned in between the filming and the presscons and the migratory lifestyle. Settling down hadn’t been easy, trying to find a balance even harder, and Soonyoung’s pregnancy had been difficult, more lows than highs that he can remember now. But being with Soonyoung to the end, taking her hand into his as they waited for the nurses to bring the twins from the NICU— it had been enough to dispel that disquiet. It made it easier to breathe.

He remembers Bongsun’s face nosing and searching for milk when Soonyoung held him close, and Bongki staring back, unblinking, as Wonwoo looked at him in fascination and let him grasp his index finger in his tiny palm, the touch light and soft, fragile. Soonyoung had started crying, then, exhausted and nervous and relieved all at once, and even with her splotchy, red face and her pale lips, he wanted to kiss her so badly it hurt. _I love you_ , he whispered instead to the back of her head, feeling her shake against him. _Everything’s gonna be okay now_.

At his silence, his mother continues, sifting the seeds away from the fruit. “I think you need to learn that with your children, sometimes you need to let go of all the bad feelings and just trust and love them,” she says, patiently. “That's all we've ever tried to do for you and Bohyuk, Wonwoo-yah.”

 

 

After the kids come home for dinner and bathe the mud and grime away, Wonwoo lays down on his childhood bed and opens his messages to Soonyoung.

 _I wasn’t in the right state of mind_ sounds insufficient. _I didn’t mean to hurt you_ feels too overused. He wonders what any of the writers he’s worked with would say at this point. Groveling has never come easy to Wonwoo, not with his pride, and stubbornness and hesitation comes easier to him than truth.

_I’m a jackass._

_Just hit me already and let’s call it quits._

_It’s not as fun without you._

_I—_

“Daaaaad,” Bongsun whines, cracking the bathroom door open and peeking his head out. “I can’t reach my toothbrush.”

Wonwoo puts his phone down, pushing himself off the mattress and padding towards the bathroom in his bare feet. Bongki’s still in the bath tub playing with a squirt gun they’d bought in the market, and he aims at Wonwoo, making _pew, pew_ noises under his breath without actually pulling the trigger. Wordlessly, Wonwoo draws the shower curtain a bit to make sure he doesn’t follow through, and hands Bongsun his panda-shaped toothbrush after squeezing a bit of flavored toothpaste onto it.

“What do you say afterwards?” Wonwoo reminds him, just as Bongsun puts the toothbrush into his mouth.

“I don’t have any post-its,” says Bongsun, blinking. “Or a wife.”

“What?”

“Just pretend,” says Bongki, bored already.

Bongsun sighs, then spits out some of the foam. “Feel the love everyday,” he says in the deepest voice he can muster, like he’s imitating an announcer. “If you love—”

“I have no idea what’s going on right now,” says Wonwoo, slowly.

“It’s one of those toothpaste commercials mom’s been obsessed with,” says Bongki. “She’s been making us watch it over and over again.”

“I don’t wanna act out the husband anymore,” Bongsun complains. “It’s weird.”

“I was only expecting a thank you, you know,” says Wonwoo.

“Watch TV more, dad,” says Bongsun. “Mom says all the life lessons we need to know are on TV.”

The irony’s enough to make him laugh, and Bongsun insists on showing him the commercial before they go to bed. Sandwiched between them, he opens the video on his laptop; it’s cheesy and contrived, but he can feel Bongsun sniffling at his chest and Bongki’s fingers grasping the hem of his shirt as they watch the couple starts crying at the end.

 _My love for you hasn’t faded_ , he finally messages Soonyoung, and sends her a short video of the twins replaying the clip and watching with rapt fascination.

 _What the fuck_ , she replies, and that’s all he gets for a minute before his phone starts ringing in the middle of Bongsun and Bongki squabbling over what video to watch next.

“Hello?” He says, keeping his voice soft. He gets up and heads out of the glass doors to the balcony, shutting the sliding door behind him. “Soonyoung-ah?”

“You’re so cheesy, Jeon Wonwoo,” she tells him, voice wavering, choked up. “What kind of person just says things like that?”

“It felt like the right thing to say at the moment,” he says, weakly.

“Dumbass,” she says, sniffling now. “Using my weakness for makjang dramas against me—you’re the worst—”

“You married me, though,” he says.

“I know. I was there,” she says without heat. “Don’t make me regret it.” He waits for her to get her bearings for a while, and when her sniffles die down, she asks, “How are you and the kids?”

“No one’s crying or making threats again. We’re getting better, I think.”

“That’s good.” A beat. “What do you mean, ‘again’?”

“The drive here was hell,” he says. “They kept asking for you, you know.”

“Good,” she says, with a short, sharp laugh. “Glad to know they haven’t forgotten me yet.”

“They miss you a lot.”

“I miss them too.”

“How about me?”

“You don’t need to ask that.”

“I wanna hear it, though.”

“Wonwoo—”

“I miss you,” he blurts out, voice shaking. He leans against the railing, sagging against it like it’s taking everything to keep him up. “I miss you so much. I’m sorry I hurt you. I got so caught up in my head, and I know it’s not right, I know I’m being stupid, but I was just scared and everything’s just been too much all at once, I don’t— I can’t—”

“Wonwoo…” She says, softly, like she’s talking to a frightened animal. “It’s okay. I’m not mad anymore. We’re okay. Breathe..”

“I’m not freaking out,” he says, even as his head feels like it’s spinning and his chest is tightening up. “I’m not.”

“I know, baby,” she says, “but just—sit down and breathe for me, please?”

Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. He remembers calling her once during their breakup, drunk and heartbroken and missing her so badly it hurt; it felt like the world was closing in on him and suffocating him as he drove in the near-empty highway blindly, like he couldn’t find his way, and her voice had been the only thing grounding him, keeping him afloat when the flashing lights of the incoming car hadn’t.

It’s still hard to think about, even now.

“Wonwoo? Are you still with me?”

He takes a deep breath, then licks his lips, trying to get the dryness of his mouth out. “Yeah,” he says, “I’m still here.”

“Are the kids with you?”

“No, they’re inside the room.”

“Are you outside?”

“I just went out to get some air,” he says. “I—I wasn’t gonna do anything.”

“I know you weren’t,” she says. He can hear her fingers tap against her phone, the way she does when she’s thinking about something deeply. “I wish I could hold you right now.”

“Me too,” he says, closing his eyes. “I want that too every day.”

Sometimes, Soonyoung jokes that he’s needier than any of the kids, and he thinks it’s not too far from the truth. It’s easy to fall apart without her.

“I know,” she says, barely a whisper but Wonwoo can hear it, loud and clear. “Get some sleep, babe. We’ll see each other soon enough.”

“I love you,” he tells her for the first time in days, before she can hang up.

She doesn’t say it back, but she doesn’t really need to; she just presses a wet, smacking kiss from the other end of the line and wishes him goodnight.

He takes a few more minutes to compose himself, staring without seeing anything beyond the dark, cloudless sky, and when he comes back inside, Bongki and Bongsun lift their heads from where they’re bent together and blink at him.

“Dad, why are your eyes so red?” Bongsun asks, lips pursed into a pout.

“Nothing,” he says, crawling back to bed with them and feeling the tightness in his chest loosen as they snuggle up to him like puppies and rest their heads quietly against his side. “Go to sleep. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the commercial in question is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvssarfLTDo), if anyone's interested. happy father's day, if you celebrate it!


End file.
